Nothing is Ever Truly Over
by der Jagdexperte
Summary: A Dyad is not meant to ever be parted from one another. It goes against nature. Eventually, a Dyad WILL reunite, no matter the circumstances. No matter the trials and tribulations required. Though, it may not reunite in a way either of them expect. Post-TROS Reylo with high stakes drama, a side of FinnRose, Damebliss, and Merrical, and main course consisting of facing your fears.
1. Chapter 1

_**If you have read "The Jedi and the Nightsister" then feel free to skip to the next chapter, as there is no difference between this and that, besides a crawl and a different end note. I said that "The Jedi and the Nightsister" was meant to be the first chapter in a larger story, but the reason I decided to post it twice is two-fold. 1.) I felt it made a great one-shot standing on its own. 2.) I also consider the chapter essential to this story. So I decided to post it twice.**_

_**If you have NOT read "The Jedi and the Nightsister" then know that it is not necessary to read that to understand this, and that I hope you enjoy it.**_

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_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter One**_

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_Peace reigns! The oppressive GALACTIC EMPIRE is finally laid to a permanent rest with the death of its remnants. The path to recovery is long, but the galaxy is determined to keep the peace through any means necessary, in memory of all that have been lost._

_The once-in-four-thousand-years Dyad in the Force has gotten so close to achieving balance. After the evil EMPEROR PALPATINE met his end, BEN SOLO's body disappeared, but his counterpart REY can still feel him in her very bones. They have become one; two souls living in one body._

_However, the balance of the Force is still on a precipice! REY is the living embodiment of both the JEDI and the SITH. Will she choose to safeguard the SKYWALKERS' legend? Or will she fulfill her destiny as EMPRESS PALPATINE? As for BEN SOLO, his disappearance is not the final word in the story of SKYWALKER..._

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The endless sea of space was peacefully silent, as it has been in the Dathomir system for decades now. But that didn't mean no life was present. On the contrary, as the _Stinger Mantis_ dropped out of hyperspace just before the red planet the system was named for.

Within the cockpit, BD-1 fixed his optics on Dathomir, finding a fascination with the planet everytime his masters travelled there. It was their safe haven for the last several decades, if only because the Empire never touched it. Not like they did with Kashyyyk, Zeffo, and especially Ilum. The ice planet suffered a fate worse than occupation, having been dug up and turned into a superweapon last BD-1 knew. Not even Bogano was safe from the Empire anymore after Trilla had caught up to them during the chase for the holocron. Though Dathomir was not necessarily 'home' per se, whenever there was too much heat it was a place they could always rely on to be safe from the Empire.

The exploration droid quickly glanced back at his masters, to see if they were looking, before shuffling over and trying to cheekily push one of the buttons on the copilot's dash. It was a habit he'd developed shortly after first coming aboard the ship way back when.

A small whip of green Nightsister magick slapped his leg away, making him jump back and beep in alarm. "Stop that," Merrin's rich Dathomirian voice admonished the droid from the copilot's chair.

Though she had aged considerably since first meeting BD-1, she was still a vision, with her spectacular hair – silver from birth and now let down – skin pale as snow, emphasized further by her intricate facial tattoos, and a slender figure maintained through constant exploration of the galaxy alongside her adventurous Bond-mate.

A familiar chuckle erupted from the pilot's seat. "You know he does that all the time," Cal reminded his Bond-mate of the droid's habits. "I don't know why you keep trying to stop him."

Though he had aged over the last fifty years, life had been mercifully kind to the nontraditional Jedi Knight for that time. No longer was his hair the glorious red it was in his youth; now, it was greyed out. He still had a fit form; he'd always been active ever since he was a Padawan a very long time ago, and never stopped being such over the years.

"He's being a child, and he _knows_ it," Merrin retorted, crossing her arms and glaring at BD-1, not once shedding her proper posture.

Cal's gaze lingered at that, having always found the regal way she carried herself quite attractive.

He ripped his gaze away quickly, though, just remembering that he was still flying the ship into the atmosphere. "I agree, but you and I both know actual children are much worse," Cal pointed out. "Surely you remember how much of a handful Ana and Nat were as kids."

"Ana wasn't _terribly_ troublesome, but I agree with you on Nat." Merrin couldn't help but smile at the mention of their daughters.

Cal briefly caught the soft look in her eyes. He could feel what she was thinking. "You're thinking of when we found out about Ana again."

"Yes." Merrin got lost in her memories from so long ago. "We were so young back then. We had no idea what awaited us."

"We didn't," Cal nodded in agreement as he landed the ship with a practiced grace. "I still remember when you told me you were pregnant. I had no idea how to react. I was thrilled, scared, overwhelmed… you name it, I felt it."

"Imagine how I felt," Merrin turned in her chair to face him, face earnest as they connected once again. "Back then, I did not even know it was _possible_ for us to have children. You being a Jedi and me being a Nightsister…"

Cal stood up from his seat, offering a helping hand to Merrin, which she took, allowing him to help her up. "That was one thing that overwhelmed me," he murmured lowly to her, still holding her hands. "Thinking about raising Jedi Nightsisters." He then grew a smile that instantly took Merrin back fifty years. "But I think we did alright, huh? Nightsisters and Jedi are pretty well-off together."

"Yes," she nodded, lips turning up into a smile. "I think we did alright for two survivors. We adapted well."

"Yeah," the Jedi absently agreed. He was lost staring into Merrin's warm amber eyes. He never got tired of seeing the comforting understanding in them, as well as just how much _love_ they carried.

The Nightsister noticed the way he looked at her, and by this point Merrin didn't even care anymore about what they were talking about before. She was just so in love with this man who understood her so deeply that she would let him get away with just about anything.

Merrin was so lost within Cal's emerald gaze that she didn't even notice the distance between them getting closer and closer. It wasn't until their lips met that she finally noticed, and she saw the stars light up like fireworks. It was a familiar feeling to her, one that she had experienced frequently over the last fifty years, but it was one that never failed to take her breath away every time.

"Oh, come on, don't you two kiss each other enough?" a female voice quipped, making them break apart.

"After all this time, I don't think you have the right to be disgusted by our parents kissing anymore, Nat," another female voice leisurely retorted, strumming a very familiar tune on a hallikset.

"I'm not _disgusted,_ Ana! It's just always weird watching them kiss!"

Cal and Merrin turned, finding both of their pride and joys by the lounge. It didn't matter that their daughters were both in their early middle ages with families of their own; they would always be their little girls. Both had very similar, though striking nonetheless, appearances; they inherited their mother's paler skin tone alongside their father's red hair. They even adopted the same hair style as each other, having their hair tied back into a single bun. Both also had tribal facial tattoos like their mother, though it clashed interestingly with their father's emerald eyes, particularly when they used magick; then, they outright _glowed_ green. Suffice to say that while Cal and Merrin could always spot them from a mile away – their features were so distinct – there were some times where it was hard to tell them apart, even with their five-year age gap. At least, until they spoke. Though their ways with words were different, both spoke with an accent more akin to Cal's, but there was a barely-there hint of their mother's Dathomirian accent there, which was more noticeable whenever they spoke incantations.

"I thought you'd come to realize it'd be the same for you when you had a family of your own," Ana said, ever the more mature of the two, as she set her hallikset aside. Playing the stringed instrument was something she grew fascinated by as a child after hearing her Auntie Cere play it. The song Cere had wrote – the one Cal was able to play after merely touching her own hallikset – was the first one Ana had learned, and the one she was just playing.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I want to see our PARENTS lip-locked," Nat shuddered. She was quite the opposite compared to her older sister, and it showed through her more stubborn attitude.

Cal and Merrin glanced at each other, sharing a smile as they made their way over. It was a familiar sight to them to see their daughters bicker. Both were passionate women, albeit in very different ways, which led to them arguing with each other often growing up.

"Yet you'll do the same as them in front of your family?" Ana countered, shooting a particular look at her sister saying that she wasn't fooled.

"That is _completely_ different and you know it!" Nat stood up and pointed her finger at her sister accusingly.

Ana stood up as well, a smart-mouthed retort ready to fly from her lips.

"Anastasia. Natalya." Merrin finally interjected firmly, using her girls' full Dathomirian names to get their attention.

The looks on both of their faces suggested she had indeed. Their eyes went wide and their faces flooded with fear, that childish fear that their mother had caught them fighting again. It still persisted even into adulthood when their mother spoke like _that._

"Did you both rest well?" Merrin purposely smiled disarmingly with her patented mom voice. She preferred to use reverse psychology on them, just to make them sweat a little more and perhaps think twice about next time.

It worked here, too. "Yes, mother!" both bowed their heads contritely. That tone made them feel like they were both children again.

Cal chuckled in silence at how quick their girls were to please their mother. It was a part of Nightsister culture that children give their mother the utmost respect, and Merrin clearly succeeded on that front.

"Girls," he called. Ana and Nat turned their gazes towards their father. "Seriously, thank you for coming to Exegol with us. It really means a lot."

Merrin could see the lingering sibling animosity fade away instantly in her daughters' eyes at Cal's earnestness with them, replaced with the love and adoration they had for their father. Her heart melted all over again.

"Of _course_ we'd come with you, Dad," Nat said, caught off-guard. "Did you really think we wouldn't?"

"We would always come if you needed us, even if you did not want us to," Ana promised.

Cal nodded. "I know, I just… I didn't want to tear you away from your families…" He began looking everywhere but at them; it was one of his tells that he either felt shameful or nervous about something.

Ana and Nat both understood immediately that it was the former: though their father had a habit of finding trouble, they knew he never wanted to impose on anyone; his blessed Jedi compassion forbid it. Both of them crossed the lounge and enveloped Cal in a group hug.

"Did you seriously forget that _we're_ family, too?" Nat whispered. "We may have grown up, but that doesn't mean we'll stop seeing you altogether."

"I know," Cal choked up a bit. He loved his girls, and to receive that same love in return filled him with such elation. He tightened his embrace around them. "I know I've said it many times before, but I love you both so much."

Merrin couldn't hold back her tears of joy anymore after seeing her family together. She joined the group hug with a practiced ease, everyone working to include her also. After her sisters were all killed, she never thought she would be surrounded by a loving family again. But she was so unbelievably happy that wasn't the case.

An optimistic yet questioning trill briefly broke apart the hug, but Cal, Ana, and Nat all laughed and Merrin broke a smile as they noticed BD-1 on the holotable watching them with a pleading look.

"Get over here, Best Droid number One!" Nat beckoned the droid over using her own special nickname for him. "You're family, too!"

BD-1 grew joyful as he enthusiastically beeped and assimilated himself into the family's group embrace, receiving fond pets from the two younger members of the family. Both girls grew up with the droid filling a role much like that of a beloved family pet, even if BD-1 was much more capable than any other pet out there. It could be argued that BD-1 was a superior pet even compared to the beastly Nydak that their mother had attested was sometimes domesticated by her people. Though the girls had found Nydaks ridiculously cool if only for their size and strength, they both were in agreement that BD-1 was cooler.

Finally, all of them broke apart. "I'm curious, though," Nat said, placing a hand on her cocked hip. "How do you know Lando Calrissian?"

Cal chuckled, "I don't. But your Uncle Greez did."

"You know he was acquainted with many unsavory types," Merrin reminded. The younger women nodded, remembering the stories about the Haxion Brood.

"He knew him through Maz. You remember her, right?"

Again, Ana and Nat nodded, remembering the tiny, old, orange, and extremely insightful woman from their trip to Takodana back when they were kids. From what they remember, Maz knew just about everyone in the galaxy. She had so many connections it was wondrous to them that she could keep track of them all.

"Huh," both girls went in realization.

"Alright, well… Stay safe girls," Cal bid them farewell.

Ana and Nat both nodded with a smile.

"And watch out for bounty hunters," Merrin interjected with her own concern.

The younger women both rolled their eyes in such a Merrin way whilst exuding a relaxed confidence much like their father's. "We'll be fine, mother," Ana said, as both of them pointedly rested a hand on their lightsabers on their belts.

Merrin nodded in acquiescence. Her concern faded at the reminder that they weren't defenseless little girls anymore. But she did gather them both for one last hug. "I love you, _Stasya, Natasha._"

"Love you too, mother," the younger women chorused as one in response to their mother's personal Dathomirian nicknames for them, returning the embrace.

When they broke apart, Ana and Nat lingered for a second longer as they gazed upon their family. It was interesting, they thought, that they had such a picturesque family. They found it ironic since both their parents had lost everything at a young age. Add to that how Ana and Nat had grown up in the middle of a galaxy-wide war. Both remembered times when both their parents were so distraught from the stress of having to live a life on the run from the Empire with two children to care for. But they figured perhaps the Force worked in mysterious ways and had opened a path for two tremendously suffering people to have a happy ending.

With those thoughts, both of them vanished off the _Mantis_ in wisps of green.

BD-1 quickly jumped back over to his preferred perch along the edge of the holotable, while Cal and Merrin moved to sit in the lounge area, finally taking the opportunity to relax after all the action.

But the Nightsister could feel her Jedi's thoughts were still focused, and… haunted. She scooted over and leaned into his side, grasping his hand with both of hers. "What are you thinking about?" she gently prodded.

Cal didn't talk for a bit, but Merrin patiently waited. Eventually, he revealed what troubled him. "Those red troops we ran into aboard that star destroyer…"

The Nightsister nodded, her caressing beckoning him to continue.

"The way their masks looked… It reminded me of the clones."

Merrin instinctively grasped his hand tighter, knowing exactly where Cal's mind was headed even without their bond.

"And then, it almost felt like I was back over Bracca, in the Venator."

Merrin's heart ached for him, knowing just how much pain that experience still gave him.

"I can still hear that comm message the commander got, telling them to execute Order 66. And then, everyone I thought was my friend started shooting at me and… and Master Tapal…"

"I _know,_" she soothed, nothing but understanding in her face. "It is okay to feel that way. Sometimes I feel the same way whenever I see the girls spar with their lightsabers."

Cal's face grew anguished, not for his own pain, but for Merrin's. He knew even now she still associated lightsabers with the death of those she cared for.

"A part of me just wants to pull them away and throw those things into an abyss so they don't get cut down by them. Like my sisters were."

"I'm sorry," Cal muttered, looking down.

"Don't be." Merrin let go of his hand and gently turned his face so he could look at her. "As much pain as those blades had caused me in the past, I could not bear to stop you from passing on your Jedi ways to them. Just as you had no desire to stop me from passing my culture on."

He reluctantly nodded, conceding that she had a point: he never thought about not letting her pass on the Nightsisters' ways, not least of which was because he was also fascinated with her culture, just wanting to learn everything about her.

"You must remember that it is all in the past, Cal, and that you need to keep on the path forward." She ran her hands through his hair soothingly, further helping rid the tension within him.

"Yeah… yeah…" He grasped his lightsaber hanging off his waist, getting lost for a moment as he stared at it. "But the thing is… it felt _good_ to kill them. A part of me felt like I was getting revenge on the clones for betraying us."

Her hands came behind his head, and then she rested her forehead on his, lowering her voice to a mere whisper. "And it's okay to feel that way, too. Do you remember what I told you about how the Nightsisters used the Dark Side?"

"They use it but don't let it control them." He recalled, matching her whisper with his own soft voice.

"Exactly." She lightly brushed her lips against his. "It is natural to feel emotions. I know the Jedi believed they led to the Dark Side," she quickly said, noticing how he was ready to retort, likely about how emotions were treated by the Jedi, "but even you must admit you cannot stop yourself from feeling them. The key to not being consumed by the darkness is to control how you react to your emotions… to not let them control you."

He couldn't counter her, he knew. Merrin's unique perspective of things allowed her to come to highly logical outside-the-box conclusions that even a Jedi couldn't refute, because she didn't attach herself so strongly to a set of ideals the way the Jedi did. He didn't agree with her about the holocron way back in the day at first, but he eventually conceded she was right and came around. Ultimately, she was the reason he decided to stop strictly following the Jedi Code; it just felt wrong to follow it with her in the picture, and she had helped him figure it out in a logical way, allowing him to make that choice with confidence. He was eternally glad for that, as he had no idea how the Jedi Order would've responded to one of their own having a family. Had he met Merrin with the Jedi Order still around, he would've likely left the Order if it was the only way he could be with her. And now she was right about the Dark Side as well.

He lightly chuckled. "You always know just what to say."

"You only just realized that?" She raised an eyebrow and barely kept a smile off her face. Her Jedi was just too sweet at times.

"Well, no, but… it's nice to have a reminder every now and again," he said as his finger toyed with that one particular lock of Merrin's hair that always hung loose to the right of her face.

She leaned into the gentle touch, finally caving in and smiling contentedly. Never did she think her life would turn out the way it had. When that armored warrior descended upon Dathomir and began slaughtering her sisters, she thought she would die. Yet she was never found from the place her Clan Mother had told her to hide, and she survived. Then Malicos came, the bastard. He took advantage of her emotional fragility and manipulated her into giving him power through her people's secrets and leading him through that awful, cursed tomb. And she survived that, too.

Then came Cal. Even upon spotting his landing she felt something different in him than she was used to, even past the haze of fearful anger she saw through after she saw him ignite his lightsaber for the first time. Before their first meeting, she saw how he had interacted with one of her old magickal relics – through his Psychometry, she later discovered – and he had sounded fascinated by her in a way that made her feel special and adored. Even during their first meeting that fascination he had was clear in his voice. But what stuck out the most to Merrin about him initially was his honesty. Whereas Malicos had hooked his claws into her by spinning the lies she had wanted to hear at the time, Cal had laid out nothing but the truth to her and let her come to her own conclusions, something that she preferred more as Cal's honesty aligned with her personality more than Malicos' deception did.

Eventually she had discovered that she and Cal were far more alike than they thought. When he told her he knew what it was like to lose everything, she thought it was too good to be true at first: someone who truly _understood_ what it was like. She got the feeling he was telling her the truth, and later on she learned of what he went through with this Order 66. It was so akin to how she felt during the slaughter of her sisters it was almost like reliving it when he talked about the experience.

Fifty years later, she was very willing to admit she was wrong about her first impression of Cal Kestis. He may have been an outsider – a Jedi – but he wasn't a thief and selfish liar. Quite the opposite, really. He had always been nothing but truthful with her, and had given her many things that were truly priceless. Just a few of them were: a new family with the _Mantis_ crew, her and him creating a new family of their own, and that bond between them, both metaphorical as well as a literal Force Bond.

She suspected the Force Bond happened during their first meetings, as Cal had mentioned feeling a strong attachment to a few echoes in the Force relating to her. She also admitted that she had continued following him because he interested her. She looked back to their first meeting in the tomb before facing Malicos for the first sign that a bond was there between them, when Cal had seemed to sense her presence – her exact location at that – before she had revealed herself. Before him, nobody had been able to sense her exact position while she was disillusioned. Not her sisters, not the Nightbrothers, not even Malicos. And since then, only Cal, Ana, and Nat were able to sense her while she was disillusioned. Nobody else.

To put it simply, Merrin knew that what she and Cal had was special. And every day she thanked her sisters and Mother for it. After fifty years together – all that time spent coping with traumatic pasts, performing an act that arguably helped save the galaxy, saving each other's lives, raising a couple of rambunctious little girls while on the run from the Empire, and teaching said girls how to use the Force and how to use magick – she honestly could not even conceive the very idea of living a life without Cal.

As she melted into his warm embrace, she thought of the idea of soulmates she had heard tales about as a child. Now, she thought, it was clear who hers was. He was her other half, as she was his.

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_**So, this is chapter one of Projekt Horcrux! For those who haven't read "The Jedi and the Nightsister," welcome. I don't really have much to say besides I hope you enjoyed and I hope I captured Cal and Merrin's relationship well. I really enjoyed this romance in Jedi: Fallen Order, and I hope Respawn develops it further if they make a sequel.**_

_**I referenced the Sith trooper helmet design having similar design elements to the clone trooper helmet design, which is a touch I really enjoyed. I don't think it's been confirmed or denied on whether or not they're actually clones, but the similarity of the helmet face to that of the clone trooper helmet I think exemplifies that, just like the clone troopers, the Sith troopers are the Emperor's pawns. Perhaps they are clones, perhaps not. I wouldn't put it past them to make them that.**_

_**Obligatory disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.**_

_**Feel free to leave a review if you have any questions or just want to talk, though I will not answer guest reviews. Please get an account if you want me to actually respond to your review.**_


	2. Chapter 2

**_Nothing is Ever Truly Over_**

**_Chapter Two_**

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"I don't like sand," Rey grumbled as she fixed up the moisture evaporator. This one in particular had been giving her trouble beyond the others.

Behind her, BB-8 beeped questioningly.

"Why? Because it's coarse, rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere," she answered peevishly, ending with a grunt as she tightened the last bolt. "Finally, that blasted thing."

BB-8 trilled again, this time with sarcasm interlacing his boops, as Rey turned to him.

"Why did I come to Tatooine if I hate sand so much–why you sassy little…!" She seemed to not understand before realizing his tone and growing irritated.

"_Serenity now…_" she could hear Ben say.

She looked back behind her and saw him standing there, just as wondrous and larger-than-life as she knew him to be. Ben Solo. It was him, yet not him at the same time. He didn't have the blue appearance of a Force ghost. Hence, she believed it was all in her head, but at the same time it felt real.

Rey realized she was getting too frustrated and followed her Dyad's advice, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. She found herself getting that way a lot, and she didn't really understand why. The look that crossed Ben's face, though, suggested that he at least had an idea.

Letting out a relaxing breath, she turned around to BB-8 with a serene smile. "Alright, that was the last one. Want to switch them on?"

BB-8 beeped a restless affirmative, excited over finally being done.

Rey made it a few steps, but she hesitated and glanced back over her shoulder at Ben. She bit her lip, conflicted on whether to continue on or stay behind. Finally, she made her choice. "You go ahead and switch them on. I'll be right there in a minute."

BB-8 trilled a question, tilting his head inquisitively.

"I'm fine," she nodded and smiled reassuringly, though it felt somewhat fake to her. "I just want to… I'll catch up."

BB-8 seemed to stare at her as if he could tell she was hiding something, but made no objection as he rolled back across the sand to the Lars Homestead.

With him gone, Rey turned and faced Ben.

It was hard, to say the least, for Rey to look at him. It felt like she was being taunted with what she couldn't have, having Ben seem so real. Yet it was at odds with what she knew. She had seen him disappear with her own eyes, so it was impossible for him to be real. And yet… he was. She couldn't explain it.

But her heart ached every time she was taunted with the vision of Ben. This magnificent, wonderful, totally understanding spectacle of a man had single-handedly changed her life… and yet he was gone.

She shed a tear. It just wasn't fair. She had believed Ben Solo could come back to the light and be by her side, and he had, but he just hadn't lived through the ordeal. She wasn't happy with it, but she was resigned to it; she was plenty used to not getting what she wanted. Her family wasn't what she wanted, but she dealt with it. Luke wasn't what she wanted, but she dealt with it.

She wiped her face before turning and trudging back to the Lars Homestead, once again dejected and depressed.

Upon getting to the desert home, she soon saw she didn't have much time for being depressed. She found BB-8 by the control rig for the moisture evaporators, but it was odd. He wasn't moving.

She furrowed her eyebrows. That was weird. She stepped closer. Closing in, she noticed his scomp link was extended into the socket for the rig.

"BB?" she asked, a trickle of fear setting in as he didn't respond.

She dropped down beside him, and she could tell by the ozone smell of electricity what had happened. "Oh no, he short-circuited!"

She manually released the scomp link from the socket and quickly went to work on the ball droid. She knew just how to make him good as new.

"Aha! There you are…" She found the specific circuit breaker that was tripped and reset it. Then she rebooted him.

Just like that, BB-8 came back to life. He beeped alarmingly, his head swiveling around in a panic.

"Hey, hey! It's okay!" Rey hushed the droid and eased his anxiety. "You just shorted out." She looked to the moisture evaporator control rig. "And I think it's because of that. Let me take a closer look."

She closely examined the control rig. "Ah, that's why." She looked back towards BB-8, smiling embarrassingly. "It's not meant to interface with computers."

BB-8 trilled accusingly at Rey.

"I know! I know it's my fault!" She raised her hands in defeat. "I'm sorry!" She stood back up. "I had assumed that Luke's family had a droid to help them and had the system converted as such, but I guess I was wrong."

BB-8 beeped a curious question.

"Why did I assume they had a droid to help? Well…" Rey was lost for words. She really didn't know why she had assumed as much. "I don't know. I guess a part of me thought they were better off than they really were."

BB-8 let out another series of beeps.

"I think too highly of this place? What's that supposed to mean?" Rey asked, somewhat offended.

BB-8 answered with more boops.

"So what if there's nothing here? That doesn't mean…" She could feel the anger stirring within her again. Rey shook her head and began to walk away. "No, I'm not arguing about this with you."

BB-8 trailed after her into the homestead proper, trilling a retort.

Finally, Rey had enough. In a flash, her lightsaber was out, yellow blade ignited and pointed directly at the droid, who froze in fear. "I _can't_ move on!" she hissed back, eyes swamping with darkness.

She could feel something else behind her. A dark shadow. And yet she didn't recoil from it. It felt… inviting, in a sense. As if it belonged with her. There was power there that she couldn't resist. It was that same power she felt take hold of her on the Death Star. And she did nothing to stop it. It felt too natural.

BB-8 slowly backed up, away from the tip of her yellow blade and her dark glare. It was interesting, to see her lose control and yet be in perfect control at the same time. Though her rein on her emotions was gone, the blade didn't waver an inch.

From all he'd seen of her over the past year, the droid had never seen Rey this way before. He didn't think it was a good thing. A tense stand-off took place before she eventually lowered her blade, then BB-8 beeped a hesitant inquiry.

"Nothing's wrong… Nothing you would understand." She extinguished her lightsaber, turning around and stomping off to her room. He wouldn't understand. And why would he? He was so loyal to Poe that he just wouldn't be able to process her grief at Ben Solo's death. Poe could only see Kylo Ren, so why wouldn't BB-8 see it the same way?

She left so quick she didn't even register BB-8's sad boop.

Striding into her room, she tossed her lightsaber aside, then threw herself on the bed. Now that she was alone, she just let her tears flow, her sobs muffled by the black sweater she had taken from Exegol. It was the last thing she had left of him. It wasn't necessarily Ben that she was mourning, but rather that she couldn't live the life she wanted with him. It wasn't the Jedi way to be so selfish, but she couldn't help the way she felt about him.

She loved him.

No. She _still_ loves him.

She was in love with this incredible, complex, wild, understanding, fierce, and gentle man more than life itself. Ben Solo ignited a passion within her that she had never experienced before, nor did she think she _could_ experience. He came into her life and turned it completely upside down. He lit her every nerve on fire.

Perhaps what she treasured the most about him was that he understood her, more than she herself did. He made her feel like everything was going to be okay when she needed that support most.

Like now. She could feel his massive hand stroke her back comfortingly. Though she felt it to be impossible for him to be real, it was a soothing thought that he at least _felt_ real.

Sitting back up, she dug herself into his broad chest like her life depended on it. And in a cosmic sort of way, it did. Not just because she literally owed him her life, but also because she felt like she couldn't survive without him. He was her other half in the Force, and without him she felt lost.

"Why… W-w-why did you have to…" she sniffled. Through her crying, she couldn't even speak properly.

Ben understood her well enough. _Why did you have to die?_ Even though it truly wasn't meant to be, it sounded really accusatory, like Rey was blaming him for dying as if he could control that. Though, perhaps to a degree he could. He just _chose_ to give his life for Rey.

He did not give an answer though. When Rey looked up through reddened eyes, she saw Ben… staring at something behind her?

She turned her head, but she didn't see anything besides a dark shadow. Were she calm, she might've wondered what it was and why she felt it following her around everywhere she went.

But she wasn't. She was a mess, a total absolute wreck. And it took everything in her to hold it together, but sometimes – like now – she just couldn't. A part of her just wanted to shrivel up and die because she believed Ben wasn't actually there with her.

But there was another part of her that felt as if the pain was less than she was expecting. She felt that Ben was still with her, somehow. And she couldn't figure out why.

"_Please…_ B-be with-be with me."

"_Rey,_" she heard his deep yet soothing, relaxing voice. He tilted her chin up for her to look into his deep brown eyes that always managed to see the real her. "_I'll always be with you. Right here._" He placed a hand over her heart.

She still felt morose over him not really being there, but he still managed to reach her in her visions and bring her serenity. She never would've thought the man she used to call Kylo Ren could bring her such peace.

She took his hand in both of hers and just held it, sniffling every now and then. His free arm remained wrapped around her. That simple intimacy was all Rey wanted right now, and Ben was more than willing to give it.

She didn't notice, but Ben glanced behind her and saw that dark shadow again. It hadn't gone away, and that worried him.

And unbeknownst to Ben, Rey's gaze locked upon a very particular box in her room. A box that remained closed.

XXXXXXXXXX

Coruscant was a stunning planet. Entirely urban across the whole surface, with at least two thousand levels top to bottom.

But Poe didn't really have a chance to appreciate the place beyond having a great window view. He was swamped with desk work, not something he really had the talent for. He just felt completely oppressed by duty, but he pressed on because it was exactly that: his duty.

He heard the door open. Sighing, he leaned back in his chair, hands pressing against his exhausted eyes as he mentally psyched himself up to be around actual people for the first time in what felt like forever. Looking back up, he saw Finn standing there, Rose trailing behind.

"Hey man," Finn greeted with a smile. "Still at it?"

"Oh, as always, buddy," Poe returned, wiping his eyes of the sleep.

Finn's grin dropped a little upon noticing the pilot's exhaustion.

Rose voiced his thoughts, "How many hours of sleep have you gotten since we liberated Coruscant?"

"Oh… about three," Poe yawned deeply.

"Only three hours of sleep within the last seventy-two." Rose crossed her arms.

"Well, how else are we going to establish a new government? _Someone_ has to do it."

"That doesn't mean you need to run yourself into the ground," Finn said. "There are plenty of others that can do it."

"I disagree, buddy." Poe took a swig of caf, then set the cup back on his desk. "It's been a lot harder than it should've been. It's slow progress convincing people from the New Republic to come back. They're paranoid thanks to the war. It would've been easier if we had Rey, but she went off the grid, so now it falls to us."

Finn's face fell even more at the reminder that Rey had left the Resistance indefinitely. He remained silent, knowing Poe had a point but still upset that Rey had left at all.

"Well, no one said you have to do it by yourself," Rose pointed out.

Poe shook his head. "We're already thinly spread as it is. You two have your own duties, and none of us can afford to slack off."

It seemed like Rose had more words, but she was cut off by Finn saying, "Yeah. You're right."

Rose looked to him with surprise on her face. But, seeing his resigned look, it eventually clicked and she understood, as well. "Yeah… I guess we'll get out of your hair then. Jannah could use some help with finding First Order holdout cells."

Poe nodded absently, his focus returning to the holocomputer on his desk again. He heard the door shut as Finn and Rose left.

It was silent, yet it didn't register with him. He was so absorbed filling out electronic invoices and requests, like it was his mission.

"I'm surprised to see you behind a desk."

He jumped at the voice, drawing his Glie-44 blaster pistol. Looking to the voice, he saw who it was, and the surprise at the silent entrance faded. "Zorii."

It was her, alright. He could tell behind that helmet she was likely rolling her eyes at how silly he was for being startled enough to pull a blaster. He returned the blaster to his belt. He felt relief at her presence, yet also a nervousness he never felt around others.

"What brings you around here?" he asked, attempting to cover up the nerves with his usual charm. "Did you come to gawk at me all day?"

"I'd sooner make eyes at a Trandoshan," she quipped back.

"Oh, you wound me." Poe grabbed at his heart in mock pain.

"Good. Your ego could stand to come down a tick."

Poe couldn't help but chuckle. He really enjoyed bantering with Zorii, because she could really dish it out. He liked that, and now that he reflected had really missed that sort of thing for the past several years. Sure, he often had many a good time with Black Squadron. But it was different when it was with her. He felt a greater sense of content.

"I just thought I'd express how unprepared I was to see you working behind a desk," the bounty hunter remarked.

"Yeah, well who else is going to do it?" Poe wasn't a fan of working behind a desk, but he'd do it for the sake of duty.

"I could think of some others."

The pilot shook his head in denial. "No. I have to do this."

"Why?" She tilted her head inquisitively.

"Why?" he repeated, blinking incredulously. "Because…" He tried to find words to describe, but the words that came to him didn't speak for him the way he wanted.

"Poe…" He heard the warning in her voice. "Don't lie to me."

He sighed in defeat and hung his head. It didn't sit well to lie to her specifically, so he fessed up. "Leia wanted to restore the Republic. I owe it to her to finish what she started."

Silence reigned, until Poe heard ruffling. He saw out of the corner of his eye her helmet be placed upon the desk. That rose his curiosity; he didn't expect that. So he looked up.

How long had it been since he last saw her without her helmet on? Seven years? That was how long it had been since he left the spice runner life behind. It was very rare for her to take off her helmet. For her to remove it now, Poe could only guess she was being serious.

"That doesn't mean you have to _be_ her," Zorii said, her honest, green eyes reaching into his soul.

He thought about it. She made a good point: while he could finish what Leia started, that didn't mean he had to _embody_ Leia to get it done. But he didn't think he could do it as himself. He shook his head and chuckled ruefully. "Come on Zorii. You can't really think I can do this my way."

"Because you haven't tried," she retorted, seeing right through his self-deprecation. "You've tried so hard to do this her way that you haven't even considered _your_ way."

She was right. He was so fixated on trying to be like Leia that he didn't even think about what _he_ would do. Though he did have his reason for that; namely, that he didn't think he was the kind of person who people would get behind. Over Exegol, he was in his element. He was at his best when he was in the cockpit of an X-wing. It was easy to be a combat leader. To be a political leader was entirely different. And unlike Leia, Poe couldn't do both. He was too rash, too impulsive to be a political leader. It had even crossed his mind that perhaps he was too hot-headed to be a combat leader, also. He really didn't know how they had won at Exegol. Looking back, the Allied fleet should've been eradicated by the Sith fleet and the massive lightning storm.

"Zorii… I led nearly five million people to their deaths." He felt incredibly guilty for leading the Allied fleet to Exegol, leading them to their deaths by association. "That's all on me. Is that the kind of person people would trust to lead an era of peace?"

"No," she answered bluntly. It jarred him a bit until he heard her speak again, but this time full of honesty. "But that's why you shouldn't do this alone." She set her gloved hands on his desk as she stood before it. "Plenty of people are willing to help you. You just have to let them."

Poe thought he kind of understood what she meant. He may not be the one to lead the restored Republic, but he had people who could help.

But he noticed her gaze bore into him, a very particular earnestness in her eyes. He knew what that look meant, as he had seen it before, when she gave him that medallion to help him board the _Steadfast._

"_You?_" he guessed, surprised. "You would help me?"

She nodded, lips turning up when she saw he understood. "There's nothing left for me with Kijimi gone." Her finger traced the desk surface. "As much as I treasure Babu, I'd grow bored with droidsmithing. You were always the thrill seeker of us."

He was stunned. Zorii had every right to never want to see him again after he left her the way he did. And yet she wanted to help. "Thank you," he said with sincerity.

"Don't get used to it," she retorted, grabbing her helmet and holding it against her hip.

His lips twitched in humor. He let his eyes roam over her face. It may have been seven years, but he could see she had been shaped tremendously by them. She had become even stronger than he remembered, something he didn't think possible back then. She was already incredible; now she was just even more incredible.

"You changed your hair," he pointed out.

Her eyebrows rose, surprised he noticed, yet also pleased he did. "I did. The Felicity haircut wasn't doing it for me anymore."

"It looks good." And he meant it. The cascading waves her hair fell in now was a style he thought really suited her. It wasn't deliberately done up to look neat; it just coincidentally happened to look good, even without an effort to make it so. The coincidental neatness of her hair he thought revealed her inner compassion in spite of her dirty line of work, a compassion the levels of which surprised even him.

What surprised _her,_ however, was his thoughtful pointing out of her hair. She didn't even try to do it up to look presentable; this was her helmet hair. And it caught her off guard to find he liked it. She wanted to say something, but couldn't think of anything and settled with, "Thanks."

A few seconds of silence passed as they continued looking each other up and down. She had been hurt when he left, and even now she still felt it. But she had to admit, he looked like he belonged as a hero. He looked like a hero out of legend, but curiously, he reminded her more of the dirtier heroes. She liked that. It let her know that, despite his best efforts, he hadn't managed to change his core personality from what it used to be.

Eventually, she realized she was staring too long and snapped out of it. She nodded jerkily and proceeded to walk out.

It crossed his mind again how he had left her. He hadn't really addressed it with her on Kijimi. Now that he knew for sure she had survived the planet's destruction and the victory high had died down, he felt like now was as good a time as ever. "Hey, wait a sec!"

She stopped, facing away from him.

Nerves plagued him again. He had no right to even talk to her after he left her behind. She shouldn't have even deigned to hear him out. But he took advantage of her lenience and made the most of it. "It might be worthless to you, but… I'm sorry, Zorii."

He couldn't tell with her facing away, but she was surprised at his apology and more touched by it than even she thought she could be. There was a time where she believed she could never forgive Poe at all.

The pilot himself, however, took her silence as rejection. He closed his eyes in pain and regret. Yet another thing he messed up.

"Poe?" her voice spoke up.

He looked up. Maybe? Could she?

"It wasn't worthless."

Zorii could now confidently say she was wrong about never forgiving Poe. There was just something about him that made her unable to hurt him.

Poe's hopes soared. As she left the room, he grew a thankful smile. He knew he didn't deserve her forgiveness, but the fact she gave it anyway gave him hope. Maybe what was once between them could be repaired.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**And there's chapter two! Rey's sad and angry at the galaxy, Ben is inside Rey (not in that way, get your mind out of the gutter) BB-8's scared of Rey, Poe's overworked, self-deprecating and guilty, and Finn, Rose, and Zorii are aware of it, but only Zorii knows what to do about it.**_

_**I will say that, though I massively hate TROS's ending, there were parts of the film I enjoyed. One of those was Poe and Zorii's dynamic. It was really interesting, and it just stuck with me. I really liked that Zorii's the only woman who doesn't fall for Poe's charm, and to me at least that makes him want her the most, BECAUSE she isn't easy. One of the things I will always praise about JJ Abrams (even though there are a number of other things he does that I don't like) is his ability to make interesting romances. We saw him do the same thing in TFA with Rey and Ben, and look how popular Reylo became. Of course, much of that popularity ultimately was because of Rian Johnson, but I do acknowledge JJ for creating Reylo. And I blame Chris Terrio for destroying it.**_

_**Full disclosure: I'm a Reylo. If that triggers you, then the door's that way.**_

_**And, of course, I HAD to make a Felicity reference when talking about Keri Russell's hair. It just had to be done. :)**_

_**If you're confused by what the crawl said and what's in this chapter about Rey and Ben, don't be. What the crawl said about them being two that are one is true. However, Rey doesn't know that. She believes Ben is dead, regardless of what's actually true.**_

_**That statistic about nearly five million deaths suffered by the Allied fleet is not actual fact. I came to that number based off some calculations, assumptions, and inspiration. I know that the crew complement for a Xyston-class Star Destroyer is 29,585. I assume that the Sith fleet consisted of around 200 of these ships, and nearly all of them were lost. The death toll for the Empire in that case would be just shy of six million. Then, I took a look at the death toll for the Germans and Soviets during the Battle of Berlin, which I felt the Battle of Exegol most represented. About 81,000 for the Soviets and 92,000-100,000 for the Germans, and I took the max figure for the latter, which gave an 81 percent figure for Soviet losses versus German losses. Take 81 percent of six million, and you get 4.8-4.9 million losses. Nearly five million.**_

_**Of course, I own nothing you recognize. If you have a question or just want to talk, then leave a review! If you want your review to be answered, then make sure you leave your review while signed in, as those are the only reviews I can send a response for.**_


	3. Chapter 3

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Three**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

"For kriff's sake, it's going to take _forever_ for us to clean out this planet!" Jannah raged that night to Finn and Rose as they were on the walk back to their quarters. "They can just hide in any one of the two-thousand plus levels across the whole surface of the planet! And they can ambush us at every corner and corridor!"

"Well, now we know what it's like to fight against the Resistance," Finn commented thoughtfully.

"Yeah, we often used to use guerrilla tactics," Rose agreed.

"It pisses me off the most because they have even more kriffing flametroopers than usual. And you know how devastating they are in close proximity, Finn," Jannah continued to vent.

"Likely their remaining jet troopers rigged their jetpacks and turned them into makeshift flamethrowers. There's little benefit to having jet troopers if they can't freely move around. Eventually, the roasters will run out," Rose confidently said. "They won't be able to sustain their fight forever."

"I just wish it could be over and done with already! It's been immensely frustrating having to deal with them combined with the heavies locking down corridors with their megablasters."

"More frustrating than jet troopers?" Finn joked.

"Oh, sod off you!" Jannah pushed him, cracking a grin. "Not everybody has as amazing aim as you."

"I thought you using that bow meant you were amazingly accurate. One shot, one kill and all."

"We should see how _you_ do at using one next time we go in!" Jannah pointed her finger at Finn.

"Pass!" Finn laughed. Jannah followed suit.

Rose, however, didn't. Instead, she felt a tad uncomfortable at Finn and Jannah talking so comfortably about ending other peoples' lives. That, combined with his demeanor meeting with Poe, made her believe he was somewhat out of touch with reality.

"Alright, see you later," Jannah bid farewell, heading into her quarters.

"See you," Finn waved.

Upon reaching Finn's quarters, Rose just couldn't remain quiet anymore. "Alright Finn, what's bothering you? I saw how you reacted when Poe brought up Rey."

"What?" he asked out of surprise. He hadn't expected her to catch that. "Oh-uh, nothing. Nothing's bothering me."

"Finn…"

"No, I swear! Nothing's wrong!"

"Just stop it." She knew he was trying to deny it. She stared him down until he gave in.

"It's just…" He sighed, and suddenly seemed exhausted. He took a seat on the couch. "Why did Rey have to go? Doesn't she know how much we need her?"

Ah, there it was. Rose had always known Finn was very close to Rey, closer than Rey was to him. Everything he did seemed to revolve around Rey. There was a time where she thought maybe he was fighting for the Resistance, but now it was clear he was just fighting for Rey.

"I mean, what was she thinking going off by herself – with no explanation – when people need her?"

Rose crossed her arms. "Only she knows, but you can't let her dictate your life, Finn."

Finn's mouth dropped. "You can't be suggesting that I forget about her! She's my best friend!"

"You can't be so dependent on her, either!" Rose finally lost her temper and shouted at him. And just kept dishing it out. Her finger pointed agitatedly at him. "From the first moment I met you, all you cared about was where Rey was! And that's all you can think about now!"

Her tirade interrupted his attempt to respond. He found it very difficult to counter her point. But in one regard, he did. "That's not true. I mean…" He swallowed nervously. "… I care about you."

His words calmed Rose down from her previous anger, but she still looked sad. "I know."

For a moment, Finn felt surprise. He didn't expect that.

"But you care about her too much."

Only for it to be quickly replaced by confusion. He watched her leave, thinking hard on her words. He cared _too much_ for Rey? What did she mean?

Rose, on the other hand, proceeded to Kaydel's quarters. She needed to have some real girl talk with her.

Entering her quarters, Rose noticed Kaydel letting her hair down. She never took real notice before, but the lieutenant bore a remarkable likeness to the late General Organa. She had even adopted the general's Alderaanian hairstyles.

"We have a problem," Kaydel revealed.

Rose did a double take, caught by surprise at the sudden drop. "What is it?"

"The _Derriphan_ – the Star Destroyer that destroyed Kijimi – it's still out there."

Rose took a heavy seat in one of the chairs. That was a serious problem. One of the Sith fleet's Star Destroyers still being out there presented a crisis for them. Just one of those _Xyston_-class Star Destroyers could destroy an entire planet. Add to that its complement of elite Sith troopers – standard ground troopers as well as jet troopers – and advanced TIE/dg starfighters, and just one of those Star Destroyers could wreak utter havoc on the currently unstable galaxy.

The mechanic also recalled perhaps the biggest problem with the _Derriphan_ still being out there. "And because it's already out in space that means its shields are up." Unlike on Exegol where the planet's atmosphere prevented their deployment, in deep space the ship's deflector shields would work without flaw, making it that much harder to take down. "Do we know where it is?"

"No," the lieutenant shook her head, both in response to Rose and to free the rest of her hair. "It's hiding quite well. And that makes me nervous. We didn't know about this threat before we spread our forces out to liberate the rest of the galaxy. Now that we do, it's obvious we're spread _way_ too thin. They have the strength to blitz right through any of our lines. And that's if they even feel like fighting; if they're feeling lazy, they could just blow us all up from outside atmo."

"Great," Rose grumbled. "My day just got better."

Kaydel turned around, raising her eyebrows upon spotting Rose's upset demeanor. "What happened?" she inquired.

The mechanic let out an overwhelmed sigh. "Finn's really frustrating me right now," she admitted.

"How so?" Kaydel took a seat on the sofa adjacent.

Rose pursed her lips in indecision, wondering if she should tell her the one thing she didn't confront Finn about. She evaluated her. She remembered that Kaydel had been a part of Poe's mutiny aboard the _Raddus._ Though her loyalty to Poe was unquestioned, what Rose was looking for was her willingness to keep a secret.

Despite being only a little bit older than Rey, and therefore one of the youngest members of the Resistance, there was a strength in her that Rose likened to General Organa's. Not surprising considering how much time she spent at her side. She thought that maybe trusting her was alright.

"I'm concerned about how quick Finn is to killing stormtroopers."

"You're only bringing this up now?" Kaydel leaned back, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.

"Well, yeah. To be honest, I only really thought about it deeply now. A part of me finds it strange that Finn was so quick to blast his former allies."

"I've thought the same ever since he joined us," Kaydel nodded in agreement. "I always thought it odd how quick he was to turn. To turn against his allies," she snapped her fingers, "just like that? Let's just hope he doesn't do that again."

Rose looked down, and notably more despondent. "That's exactly what terrifies me. What if something happens that convinces him to turn against us at the drop of a hat? He'd have no compunction at mowing down Resistance members if he turned."

Kaydel noticed this was affecting Rose quite a bit. It made her wonder… "You're talking as if this is a possibility. Is it?"

Rose's gaze flickered away, uncertainty clouding her. "I doubt it, but… it might be."

Kaydel could see this was hard to talk about for her, so she gently encouraged her to continue.

"As far as I know, Finn is loyal only to one person."

She could see it in Kaydel's eyes her deciphering exactly who that person was. "Rey."

Rose nodded affirmative.

Kaydel furrowed her eyebrows, baffled. "I don't see how that's a problem. Rey's on our side." Her uncertain voice contradicted her confident words.

"She was incredibly secretive and untrusting," Rose countered. "Every time I saw her, something about her looked… fake. Like she was trying to hide something away."

Kaydel began showing her own self-doubts. She never questioned the scavenger's sudden addition to the Resistance, but now with all the facts laid out and time to reflect, perhaps they were too hasty to trust her. She _was_ highly secretive. She _didn't_ trust people. It all made sense as to why she was so isolated even within the Resistance.

"There's just something…" Rose tried to search for words. "… _wrong_ with Rey."

Kaydel was starting to get at what Rose was saying. "And you think if she commanded it, that Finn would turn against us."

"It already happened once. He lied about being a Resistance member just to get on her good side." Rose brought a hand to her forehead. "Hypothetically, who's to say he wouldn't turn against us to stay by her side?"

Kaydel leaned forward. "You seem more concerned about this than I thought you would be."

"I'm perceptive enough to see the possibility. And _that_ is what bothers me."

After finding out about the _Derriphan,_ Kaydel understood; the mere _possibility_ of something terrible was frightening all by itself.

XXXXXXXXXX

A speeder flew by Rey, forcing her to jump to the side as it kicked up a cloud of dust.

She coughed to expel the dust from her lungs, then yelled towards it, "YOU BLOODY KNOB!"

At her side, BB-8 beeped quite sarcastically.

"You said it, BB," she agreed, still pissed. "Welcome to Mos Eisley: the most wretched hive of scum and villainy you will ever know."

And Rey hated it. Mos Eisley was worse than Niima Outpost in every way, if only because the patrons of Mos Eisley were far more organized than the scavengers. The bounty hunters that plagued Mos Eisley had equipment that Jakku's burliest scavengers could only dream of. Because of that, it was less wise to get in a fight with them.

"Well, let's get this over with," Rey said as she gazed irately upon the marketplace. The first sun had already set, and the second sun was getting lower in the sky. She was eager to get back to the homestead before nightfall.

BB-8 rotated his head quizzically and with a bit of apprehension. He beeped at her.

"Oh, that's folly!" Rey retorted. "They just _say_ they don't like droids. That doesn't mean they'll actually do anything about it."

BB-8 booped more insistently and objectively, making Rey even more irate.

"Oh, suck it up! You'll be fine. End of discussion!" she proclaimed, stomping off towards the marketplace.

BB-8 began to follow, but noticed someone staring at him. A quick analysis suggested she was a scrapper, something that placed the droid on edge knowing how Mos Eisley wasn't friendly to droids. A predatory flash of teeth made BB-8 teeter even more on edge. He quickly rolled away out of fear.

He soon caught up with Rey, who had calmed down a little bit.

"Hopefully this place has what we need," she said aloud.

The two perused the marketplace.

"_This place is dirty,_" she heard Ben comment. "_Literally and figuratively._"

"Well it's a good thing I know how to deal with seedy folks, isn't it?" she replied, full of snark.

BB-8 swiveled his head to Rey in bafflement, unable to hear the second voice. To him, it just looked like she was talking to herself.

"_Yes, it is,_" Ben agreed from her side.

That caught Rey by surprise. She looked him up and down quickly in disbelief. She expected her hallucination of Ben to be more spoiled. Likely because a part of her saw him as a prince. While technically he _could_ be considered one, she thought he captured the aesthetic of a prince very well, even if unintentionally.

"_It's a good thing you can. Otherwise you might not fit in well with my family._"

Rey was instantly reminded of Han at his words. It didn't quite hurt as much as it did before to talk about him. Time heals all wounds, she figured.

"_Speaking of… Why do you call yourself Skywalker?_"

Rey grew mum at his words. She could justify herself to pretty much anyone, but not to him. He would see right through her; he would see the rotten truth. "You know why," she muttered morosely.

"_I do. But you need to say it._"

She grew angry at his insistence, seemingly by reflex. "No I don't!"

A concerned trill from BB-8 brought her out of her talk with Ben. Turning to him, she saw his head tilted in a lack of comprehension. The annoyed realization crossed her face: _of course_ he wouldn't see Ben. He would think she was talking to herself. And she likely was in actuality.

"Leave, BB-8."

Another trill came, this one more insistent.

"I said leave!" she snapped, her fists clenching.

BB-8 jumped, quickly backing away and doing as she commanded out of fear.

Rey watched him run off, not at all in the mood to deal with him challenging her. She noticed scrappers observing nearby, but it didn't register with her.

"_Will he be okay?_" Ben voiced his own concern, not strictly for BB-8, but more on whether this was something Rey really wanted. He saw a vulture-like look in the eyes of the scrappers.

"He'll be fine," Rey replied. She didn't think BB-8 was in any danger at all. Things had a way of working out for her, and she trusted in that.

Ben looked doubtful, but made no objection. "_Regardless, why call yourself Skywalker, of all things? You could've chosen from a myriad of names. Why that one?_"

"Because it's your family's name," Rey easily replied, leading them towards less populated alleys so no one could overhear her. She didn't want anyone to think she was crazy.

"_And yet almost nobody in my family used it,_" Ben countered, taking a step closer.

"Well, I can't just not have one!" She crossed her arms uncomfortably.

"_Why not? You've done so for years now and never had a problem with it before._" He took another step closer.

"You know that all I wanted was a family. That's why I want one."

Ben took yet another step towards her, now close enough to force her to crane her neck back in order to look into his eyes. "_So why take the name of a dead family?_"

Rey tried to back up, but found her back against the wall. Literally. For a hallucination, Ben sure felt incredibly real. She felt the same feeling of enclosing when he confronted her with herself. She didn't like it, but she knew there was no escape.

"_Furthermore, you should know that changing your name is a Dark Side tradition._" He quirked an eyebrow. "_Unless you plan to cast a dark shadow on the Skywalker name?_"

"No!" she shout-whispered in denial, horrified at that line of thought.

"_I thought not,_" Ben agreed. "_But that means you really have no reason to change your name._"

"I have _every_ reason to change my name!" she sharply retorted.

"_And why is that?_" His deep brown gaze bored into her soul, imploring her to just tell the truth.

Rey stubbornly remained silent.

"_Refusing to admit it doesn't mean it's not real. Changing your name to disassociate yourself from your family ultimately won't work. Trust me, I know._"

She saw it in his extremely expressive eyes, that he _did_ know. And she had a front-row seat to it. A part of her did understand what he was saying it, but simultaneously, another part of her denied it because that would mean having to face the ugly truth of her past. And she just couldn't do that.

"I thought you'd be happy that I took your family's name," she whispered, feeling hurt that he didn't seem to.

"_But you **didn't** take my family's name. You took the **Skywalker** name,_" he pointed out. He looked far more inquisitive now, like he had finally figured something out. "_And I think I know why._"

"Oh? Enlighten me, then," she challenged, cocking her hip in a sassy way.

"_You hold onto that name because you still want to believe you had a great relationship with Luke, but you and I both know that's far from the truth, Rey._" He took a second to analyze and pick her defense apart even more. "_He didn't see you as his Padawan; he saw you as a reflection of me. And that's why he refused to train you: he was afraid you would turn out like I did._" He then delivered the biggest blow. "_You just can't get over that he wasn't the legend you imagined him to be. So you lie to yourself and to everyone else just so you don't have to face that reality, as well as the reality of your family._"

Rey started to panic, though she tried her best to remain strong. She didn't know how Ben knew that, but the fact he knew her so well to deduce that frightened her. Her carefully constructed reality was threatened by him. What was real wasn't what she wanted, so she lived in denial of it.

Ben seemed to notice he was frightening her, and softened his voice even more. "_I know you don't like your family, but you can't just ignore the fact that they **are** your family. The only way you get past this is to accept what is true and deal with it._"

The darkness of the alley felt crushing, suffocating for her. "If I do that, I'll lose myself," she whispered, tears streaking down her face.

"_You won't lose yourself-_"

"_Please…_ please don't," she interrupted hoarsely. "After losing Han, Luke, Leia, my parents, the simplicity of my past, and you, especially you above all else… I don't think I could take it if I lost anything else."

Ben saw she was on the verge of breaking. He admired Rey's resilience, but he couldn't help but pity her as well. He knew that it was just an act; he could tell underneath that was still that same scared little girl who had been left behind on Jakku. She was too afraid to confront the truth, for fear that it would hurt. And that hurt _him,_ because he knew Rey was strong enough to do it. Why couldn't she see that it didn't matter what her family was? Only that she accepted it and moved on from it. He would be the first one in line to accept Rey Palpatine, rightful heir to the Galactic Empire, and also the first one to help her leave it behind if that was what she wanted. It didn't matter if everyone else rejected her in his eyes, only that she accepted this part of herself and become a whole person. If she didn't, then he knew she would be just as miserable as he was when he became Kylo Ren and rejected Ben Solo. And her unhappiness was the very last thing he wanted.

He took a step back. He wanted to hug her and make her feel better, but he held back because he needed her to stew on his words and deliberate them. "_You might want to go find your droid then,_" he suggested, remembering her deep attachment to it.

She nodded dumbly and walked out back into the streets, wiping her face with her forearm to rid the evidence of her tears.

She backtracked to where she last recalled being with BB-8, and started asking around.

"Excuse me!" she called to a street merchant. "Did you see a small ball droid around here by any chance?"

The merchant spat a seed into a metal pot, the metallic clang ringing in Rey's ears.

"Might wanna go looking that way," he grumbled unpleasantly, pointing down the street.

"Thanks!" Rey paid no attention to his gloomy attitude and ran off the direction he pointed.

Eventually, she found a seedy place that sold scrap, and figured she could start there. She noticed there were many junked droids inside. One looked vaguely familiar, and it gave her a bad feeling.

She took a closer look as she entered, and her heart dropped.

"No…" she breathed as she fell to her knees before it. "No no no no no."

It was BB-8. Utterly destroyed, with no possibility of repair. He was mangled, punctured full of holes, and peeled apart, not a spark of electricity remaining. Even from what little she could see, she saw that his main CPUs were totally shredded.

"Hey! What're you doing?"

She turned her head, noticing a scrapper come striding to her. The scrapper looked ready to tell her off, but she got cut off. "What did you do to my droid?" Rey questioned, unable to project her voice any louder than a whisper out of disbelief.

"Oh, this is your droid?" The scrapper nonchalantly glanced them over, then shrugged. "Sorry," she said, not seeming to mean it in the slightest. "Should've kept a better eye on it."

Rey looked down at her hands, agonized. BB-8 was _gone._ There was no way she could repair him in that state; too much had been taken. There would be no more binary conversations to make her feel better. There would be no more funny games. There would be no more secrets of Poe to be spilled. There would be no more staving off the loneliness. The droid who she considered a dear companion was _gone._

Her fists clenched tight. She slowly looked back up, gaze darkening. How dare this scrapper take her droid, tear it apart, and then have the _nerve_ to just say sorry like that, as if BB-8 was meaningless? She had taken away the last companion she had! Rey felt angry, more than she ever had before. She felt pure, unadulterated _hatred._

Rey stood up, slowly, menacingly as she looked upon the scrapper, eyes burning with fire. The scrapper jittered a little backing away, feeling the darkness ooze out from Rey. She was a terrifying sight to behold, the scrapper freezing up thanks to nothing but her own fear.

Rey grabbed her lightsaber and prepared to light it. Before she could, she felt two presences behind her.

"_Rey? Rey. Don't do this. Calm down. You're not in your right mind. Just take a step back, and put the lightsaber away,_" she heard Ben over her right shoulder. He was much more unsettled than usual, extremely worried about Rey, though he tried to remain calm so as to not unsettle her. He knew Rey had a natural inclination towards the Dark Side, as much as she liked to deny it. But he never wanted her to fall victim to it like he had. He knew Rey would regret this once the haze of anger fell, and he wanted to stop it from happening before it began.

Over her left shoulder, Rey heard but one thing.

"_Do it,_" a dark shadow egged her on in a voice that sounded much like her own, but twisted. It was reminiscent of a snake's whisper, a tone that dripped in darkness and seemed to revel in others' pain and fear.

A choice was presented before Rey: to walk away and forgive this woman, or to kill her and make her suffer for her actions.

For Rey, there was no contest.

As the second sun continued to lower and the sky darkened more, she ignited her lightsaber, the yellow glow promising certain death.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**And chapter three is done! First Order holdout cells are still resisting within Coruscant, there's one Sith Star Destroyer unaccounted for, Rose is concerned about Finn's dedication to Rey, Ben confronts Rey about taking the Skywalker name, BB-8 is permanently out of commission, and Rey wants vengeance.**_

_**For those wondering why I killed BB-8, well… I did warn you when I said 'high stakes drama.' And to take Rey in the direction I want to take her, I felt it was necessary to kill off BB-8. I want Rey to do something SHE wants, not what someone else wants or expects of her. And this is that.**_

_**Ben is really getting on her case about choosing a name, which is one of the things that pissed me off the most about TROS: Rey Skywalker. Ugh, it makes me sick just to type it. For one, that's not how names work. You don't get to choose your name. A name is given. And another, it shows just how much of a failure Rey's journey was. The whole point of her story was for her to find her belonging, but she didn't get that, and taking the Skywalker name is an attempt to belong somewhere, even though there's nothing left of that family but tales. Her choosing that name ultimately means nothing. And, come on: why couldn't she take the Solo name? That would've had so much more meaning that, while tragic, would be understandable. Choosing Skywalker made zero sense and was meaningless.**_

_**Conversely, I actually really like the idea of Rey Palpatine. Granted, the way it was executed in TROS leaves a lot to be desired, but the basic idea itself is interesting. What makes me like the idea the most is that it gives big Romeo and Juliet vibes to the Reylo dynamic: two people from families at war with each other who end up falling in love. Come on, you can't deny that sounds interesting. But also, I like that, in a way, the idea of Rey Palpatine allows for a correction of the prequels. If you think about it, Ben and Rey coming together represents a Skywalker and a Palpatine coming together in the RIGHT way. Not like Anakin and Sheev, which was very much the wrong way.**_

_**Obligatory disclaimer is obligatory: I own nothing you recognize. Feel free to leave a review if you have questions or just want to talk. I'm sure you know the drill by now: I don't answer guest reviews because it is physically impossible, so please leave one using an actual account.**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Four**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

"No, please!" the scrapper begged upon realizing the threat Rey presented. It instantly turned her into a sniveling coward in Rey's eyes, as if she wasn't pathetic enough before. "I'm sorry!"

So much fear Rey felt within her. But it mattered not. It didn't make her hesitate for a second. She prepared herself, winding up.

"_REY, NO!_" Ben screamed out of desperation, hoping to stop her in any way he could.

Only for Rey's blade to fall, swinging around and mercilessly cutting the scrapper clean in half.

Instantly, Rey felt Ben's presence disappear, to be replaced with a sense of pain within her lightsaber. It felt like it was screaming in agony. Yet the blade still burned yellow.

She didn't care. She was consumed with an all-encompassing rage. She gave nothing more than a once-over of the former scrapper, turning around when she sensed her life force vanish. She felt even more strengthened by her act.

She sensed two people standing just outside, other scrappers. They were her next targets. All she could think about was to make everyone suffer as much as she had suffered.

She paced over. As soon as she got through the doorway they were standing guard at, she performed a quick one-two slash, swiftly cutting off their heads.

Another person in the area turned towards her, a common thug. The hatred radiating off Rey was so intense, even this non-Force-sensitive could feel it. Her oppressive presence froze him to the ground out of fear for his life.

It was a life he didn't need to worry about for much longer, as Rey strode over and cut him down.

Rey's eyes scanned the marketplace, spotting the large crowd present that day begin fleeing the place via multiple routes. There were many bounty hunters and scum among them, but also innocents; ordinary merchants along with elders, and women and children.

At one point, she would've dropped everything to save them, but now, Rey didn't care at all about what happened to them. She dashed towards them, saber poised to thrust through each one. After reaching them and running her blade through a few of the first she reached, she followed up her dash attack by unleashing a string of swift attacks, and the blade instantly ended everyone in its path. She felt the death of every man, woman, and child. Instead of recoiling from it, the pain only strengthened her even more.

She soon cut off another exit route. Screams of panic ensued, and she began silencing them one by one, cutting down every innocent family she came across. Every single death unleashed wails of terror both into the air and into the Force.

None of it shook Rey in the least, her eyes still burning with pure hatred for everyone who crossed her path.

She spotted another escape route that many people had fled down. She recognized that if she didn't act, then they would be able to escape unharmed.

But Rey didn't want that. Instead, she reached out into the Force, and with her unfathomable rage pulled down a building, cutting off their escape. The populace cowered before her, and Rey felt nothing but anger towards them. They were pathetic and weak in the face of danger.

She felt nothing but a thirst for blood, and threw her lightsaber at them. The blade cut half of them down, and it cut down the other half on its way back to her hand.

She sensed danger behind her from the main marketplace, and swiftly brought her blade behind to deflect a blaster bolt. Turning around, she noticed she had attracted a few enemies willing to fight back. Among them were several scoundrels and amateur bounty hunters, along with one sharpshooter whose shot had been deflected just in time by Rey.

She didn't hesitate, quickly dashing over to one and delivering a swift upwards strike, ending him at once. Sensing danger from her left rear, she turned and deflected a blaster bolt straight back at its source, killing the meaningless criminal.

"Kill her!" another shouted, leading four other thugs in a charge towards her, armed with a myriad of melee weapons.

She narrowed her eyes. She hated this person already for daring to stand against her.

The first came at her with a staff. She evaded the first strike, reflected a blaster bolt back and killing who shot it, and followed up by striking down the staff-armed thug effortlessly.

Two more charged at her, these each armed with a pair of long knives. They were swift, strikes quick and direct, but Rey was faster. She saw the attacks coming seconds beforehand, and evaded each one. As one strike came towards her, she grabbed her foe's arm, swiftly disarming her befuddled enemy and striking him down. The second knife wielder attacked, but Rey slid under his strike and cut him in half from behind. She followed up by reflecting another blaster bolt back to its origin, killing another.

The last two each had one rudimentary sword each. Rey didn't bother waiting for the first to attack, pulling them towards her and swiftly stabbing them in the abdomen, ending their life instantly. She then closed with the other enemy. She brought down her lightsaber in a heavy, overhead slash, cutting straight through their sword. She then twisted, leaping up into the air to follow up her attack with a leaping slash, ending them.

She heard running footsteps, and turned to one of the entrances left open. Two well-equipped bounty hunters with A280C blaster rifles stood there, one of them equipped with a jetpack and more sophisticated weapon gauntlets.

"I'm going in!" the jetpack hunter said, jumping into the air with their jetpack and activating one of the gauntlets, aiming downwards and unleashing a stream of fire while flying and creating a wall of flames.

Rey rolled out of the way, quickly reflecting the first bolt out of a burst of three blaster bolts from the ground hunter back at them. It wasn't enough to bring them down. She noticed them take a knee, and it was only instinct that allowed her to dodge an extremely powerful and precise blaster bolt, one that she knew she could not block.

She sensed the jetpack hunter take off again. Looking over, she saw them shoot a missile from their other gauntlet. There was no time for her to do anything other than roll out of the way. The missile strike was followed up with two blasts, which she blocked, and another powerful blaster bolt, which she dodged.

Rey scowled at them both, wiping the grime off her face. She hated these two, without even knowing them.

She focused on the ground hunter, and threw her lightsaber at them.

"AGH! She got me!"

The attack connected, curiously knocking them back and off their feet rather than just cutting them in half. Rey thought perhaps maybe their armor was somewhat resistant to lightsabers. It wasn't unheard of, she knew.

She followed up her attack quickly by dashing in a blur and grabbing their throat, hoisting them up. Her other hand hovered before their covered face and she began to _suck_ the life force right out of them. She used to _give _life, as she had to the serpent on Pasaana and to Ben on Kef Bir. But now, she was _taking _it. Once it was fully extinguished and they fell to their knees, she roughly kicked the hunter over like they were trash. Their death gave her a sick sense of satisfaction going off her twisted yet gleeful expression.

"You're mine!" the jetpack hunter taunted as they took off and launched a missile at her, which she rolled away from. It was followed up by two blasts and one powerful blast, all of which she evaded.

She bared her teeth in a deadly smirk. Rey reveled in just how much more power she had over one simple bounty hunter. She demonstrated her extreme superiority by channeling all her hatred, extending her hand and releasing it as a powerful streak of Force lightning.

The bounty hunter didn't even have time to scream, as the lightning was powerful enough to speedily fry them into a burnt crisp.

A twisted giggle left Rey's mouth. She found it funny how pathetic she found the bounty hunter for standing up to her. She slowly strode up to them, lightsaber still ignited, and cut their head off in such a casual way.

Her power trip began to wind down, and she surveyed the area.

So many dead bodies were lying all over the ground, many cut up into pieces. Rey tilted her head, finding something slightly off about the picture.

Squinting, she noticed what it was: someone was moving. She quickly strode over to investigate.

It was a little girl, no more than six solar rotations old, wrapped in the arms of her dead parents. Rey could feel the traumatic fear coming off her. So much that it was impossible to speak.

Looking to either side of her at her parents, Rey was reminded so heavily of her own parents. She knew they had given their lives to protect her… and yet, she _hated_ them for abandoning her. She was around the same age as the little girl before her when it happened. She would never forget how they left her.

"Don't worry," she breathed out reassuringly, yet her tone oozed with a darkness that was just impossible to conceal. "You won't suffer like I did."

And she ran the little girl through with her lightsaber. She died with a silent scream on her face.

Her face triggered something within Rey. It discomforted her a lot, so she looked away.

Only to run into more faces devoid of life. Feeling pained, she tried to turn away.

But no matter which way she turned, death greeted her. She began to hyperventilate as she panicked. The sight that greeted her from all angles _horrified_ her. She couldn't believe what had just happened.

She had just _massacred_ an _entire town._ The only sign of life within Mos Eisley was her own. After her actions, the place was enveloped with a dark aura. And it wasn't just criminal scum she killed, which she could've morally justified to feel better about herself. No. She had also killed innocent people _indiscriminately._ By the Force, she had looked a _child_ straight in the eyes and _murdered_ her.

She looked down at her lit lightsaber. She could feel all the pain within it. It seemed to be screaming at her in agony.

Looking to the sky, she noticed it had darkened significantly. There was only a sliver of light left as the second sun nearly set completely.

Without thinking, she sprinted in that direction like her life depended on it.

XXXXXXXXXX

On Coruscant, Finn felt a distinctly painful feeling deep inside him, in that particular sense that he could only sense Rey in. It felt not only painful, but vengeful and _dark._

"Finn?" Rose asked, concerned. "Are you okay?"

He didn't really know exactly what he was feeling. He couldn't explain it to Rose when he didn't exactly understand it himself. All he knew was that he was feeling Rey. But it didn't make sense to him. Rey had never felt this way before. She just felt so different than what he normally felt from her.

"… Yeah," he nodded hesitantly. "Yeah, I think so…"

He did still believe in her, though. Perhaps it was just a feeling and nothing to be concerned over. But it did make him lose his appetite, and he pushed his breakfast away.

XXXXXXXXXX

On Dathomir, Cal shot up from his sleep, alert and panting heavily.

"Cal?" Merrin sleepily asked, her voice scratchy from just waking up. "What is it?" She lazily wrapped her arms around him as she stretched, reminding him distinctly of a Loth-cat.

But it was only a small corner of his mind that thought such. His main focus was elsewhere.

"Something terrible just happened," he said, shaken by the feeling he just experienced.

The Nightsister woke up more at how distressed her Jedi was. "What?" she asked, immediately wishing to help him.

"There was a spike of incredible darkness somewhere," he described. "So much rage, anger, hatred, and sorrow… It's horrifying. I've only felt this level of darkness once before…"

Merrin locked her gaze with his, imploring him to continue so she could figure out how to help.

"… when I ran into _him._"

Oh no… She knew exactly who _he_ was: Darth Vader, the machine-like man who had nearly managed to kill him. Even now he still had the scar on his side to prove he had encountered him and survived. Merrin could scarcely imagine _another_ presence so twisted and corrupted. Darkness she could handle. Darkness was natural. But not that corrupted and twisted darkness of the Sith.

Cal turned to her, resolute. "We need to find it."

Merrin nodded in agreement. She trusted him implicitly.

XXXXXXXXXX

Rey ran and ran, all the way into the desert, chasing the waning light of the setting sun. She needed something to hold onto. She didn't want to feel this way, like she was about to fall apart.

The Lars Homestead was in sight. She grew invigorated by that. And there was still light in the sky. She still had hope.

She ran and ran, only just barely holding it all together when all she wanted to do was die. She felt so sick to herself for what she did. She wanted to run far, far away from it.

Just before she could get there, however, she stumbled and fell. Just as the sun set completely and the last of its light disappeared, leaving the sky in total darkness.

What she had done finally hit her, and she chucked her lightsaber ahead of her just before the homestead, now completely disgusted with it as she broke down into heaving sobs. What was worse, she couldn't feel Ben anymore. In his place, all she could feel was pain. The amount of agony she felt was overflowing, and she couldn't take it. It felt crushing.

In front of her, the featherlight brushing of a black cloak accompanied sinuous footsteps from high-quality black boots, mostly covered by the hem of a black dress, as someone approached her.

Rey heard the steps, and her sobs quietened down as she followed the black dress's hem all the way up until she saw who stood before her. Their identity shocked and terrified her.

"No… You're not real," she whispered shudderingly.

She was staring at _herself._

_Herself,_ as in the very same dark reflection of herself she had encountered within the Death Star. And she was her greatest nightmare. She was like this... _dark shadow_ she couldn't get rid of.

The darker Rey smirked, amused. "_I'm as real as you are,_" she countered in that slithery, whispery tone of hers. "_If you had been more aware of yourself, perhaps you would already know that._"

Hearing her talk made Rey realize that she had heard her voice before. "You were the one who told me to do it," she put the pieces together, shooting a glare at her. "To kill them all."

Dark Rey cocked her head. "_Yet you were the one who was so quick to do so._" Her lips curled into a grin. One that relished in causing pain. She shuffled her feet, changing her stance into one that projected power as she stared Rey down from under her black hood. The one-of-a-kind lightsaber hanging off her belt reinforced the image. "_Face it: you were the one who slaughtered that entire town without a care in the galaxy._"

"No I didn't!" Rey hissed an instinctual denial. She quickly fumbled for a possible explanation. "I know you had something to do with this! I would _never_ kill innocent people!"

"_And yet you miss the point._" Dark Rey raised her chin up at her, as if Rey was beneath her. Literally speaking, she was: Rey was still on her knees before her darker self. "_I **am** you, just as you are me. And I **know** you would do the same thing again. You want to know why?_"

Rey withered a little under how oppressive her darker self was. "No, I wouldn't do this…" she insisted, but it was with a notably weaker conviction.

"_It's because you're a survivor. You've been one your whole life. You would do anything to stay alive, absolutely **anything.** Wouldn't you?_" Dark Rey tilted her head inquisitively. She stepped closer to Rey, who looked down. She gripped her chin – surprisingly gently – with her left hand to tilt her head back up. "_There's no need to feel guilty. You lost your last companion. Why **wouldn't** you want to take revenge on the one who took him away? It's perfectly natural._"

"It's an act of evil," Rey said, trying to scramble away, but the grip on her chin intensified, enough so she felt the ring on her finger dig in to her skin.

"_Evil and good is only a matter of perspective._" Dark Rey purposely released her chin and watched her stumble back. It only demonstrated how much power she had over Rey that she couldn't escape unless she willed it. "_Like our so-called **Master** Luke,_" she mocked Rey, taunting her with her own false perception of her and Luke's relationship. "_He thought it would be a **fantastic** idea to kill his own nephew in his sleep._"

"NO! You have no right to mention his name!" Rey rose up to her knees.

"_Yet you do?_" Dark Rey paced before her with a specific lethal elegance. "_You know, he was right when he said it was time for the Jedi to die. No wonder he didn't want to train you. Clearly, you make a terrible one. No Jedi I've heard of ever culled an entire town._"

Rey couldn't hold her gaze. Her darker self made her feel so ashamed of herself. A true Jedi wouldn't commit a massacre out of uncontrollable rage. "They took BB-8 away from me," she whispered out of a final attempt to justify herself, but even she knew it only proved her darker self's point more.

"_And there you've learned your lesson,_" Dark Rey breathed, stopping her pacing. "_To love, is to die… and to **kill,** is safety._"

It was a brutal statement, but one Rey regrettably found to be true. All the people she had ever loved ended up dying. And there was a distinct satisfied sensation that filled her when she killed all those people.

"_Just accept the truth. You are no Jedi._"

All of the fight left her at that, because she was right: Rey was no Jedi. She was far too impulsive and gave into her emotions far too much. She curled in on herself even more, completely dejected.

Dark Rey then knelt before her, placing them at equal height. It was a curious move, and it made Rey look up, slightly baffled.

"_But that doesn't mean you have no purpose,_" she said with a surprising amount of care.

It confused Rey that her darker self could be so caring. And it was genuine: there was no sneer crossing her face, no hard eyes, and an honesty in her face that Rey was familiar with; people within the Resistance had often described her as having an honest face.

Dark Rey stood up, and extended her formerly clenched left hand towards her, imploring her to take it.

Part of her still didn't trust her, but another part of her thought it was foolish for her to mistrust someone who was literally _herself._ It made Rey feel like the butt of a bad joke to be mistrustful of herself.

And that is why she took Dark Rey's hand. She couldn't deny someone who knew her better than she knew herself, especially when that person actually _was_ herself.

"_The one thing you will **always** have, is **power,**_" Dark Rey imparted to her as they walked back into the Lars Homestead. "_Nothing can **ever** take that away from you._"

She made a convincing point, Rey had to acknowledge. She wasn't really one for power, though. "What are you saying, exactly?"

When they entered her room, Dark Rey stopped and turned to her. "_I'm saying to **use** that power._" As Rey sat on the bed, her darker self took a look around the place. Her gaze fixed upon one specific unopened box, and she walked towards it. She trailed a finger along the edge. She glanced back at Rey meaningfully, seeming to know what was already inside yet not judging her for it. "_If you have the power to change things, then it's a sin to choose not to when things could obviously be better._"

Rey thought deeply. It made sense to her: if it was possible to make things better and the opportunity to do so wasn't taken, then that was counterproductive. Complacency was dangerous. Even with what little she knew about the Galactic Republic and New Republic, she recognized that they were flawed and did ultimately fail. She could see that establishing another Republic like the Resistance wanted may not be the best idea.

As she thought, Dark Rey stepped towards her and off to the side. She then gestured towards the box. "_Open it._"

Rey was caught by surprise, but wasn't totally averse to the idea. "Why?" she asked, slightly concerned.

"_It's time for you to accept what is true and stop hiding from it._"

Ben had talked to her about accepting the truth several times, most recently earlier that evening. She was a bit ashamed that it was only until now that she heeded that.

Hesitantly, she paced towards the box, and slowly opened it back up for the first time. She first took out a set of clothes.

"_Put them on,_" Dark Rey gently pushed. "_You may say you don't, but I know a part of you is drawn to them. Why else would you get them despite that?_"

Rey was still wary, but she did as suggested. There was no arguing her point, after all. A part of her _did_ like this outfit she got, even against her better conscience.

She shed her all-white outfit and began putting on her new all-black one. First was a black battle dress, one whose combination of elegance and durability ensured that it was as at home on the Senate floor as it was in the face of battle, with long, tight sleeves juxtaposed by a more open v-neck. The dress was accompanied with a belt – reminiscent of Kylo Ren's but not so bulky and more streamlined – worn high just under the bust, making the dress fit even tighter than it already did.

Following was sharp, black boots with reinforced soles, which Rey really wanted because she had felt all of the dead bodies under her feet with her current pair; this new pair would allow her to put that experience behind her and never think about it again.

The next article that followed was the staple of the ensemble: the black hooded cape, just as meticulously crafted and withstanding as the dress to fit perfectly within a high-class gathering as well as on a battlefield. As opposed to the tight dress which felt more suffocating, the cloak flowed freely enough to feel like she was drowning in it.

She hesitated to take the last two items, but with Dark Rey's gently encouraging look, she did. The former item was a ring, very reminiscent of the ring Leia had worn but black. She put it on her left index finger.

The second item she was far more nervous to take. But take it she did. It was a lightsaber, double-ended with a hinge in the center. Rey examined it. The hilt was thin enough for her smaller hands to be comfortable with it. And she was ashamed it fit her so well.

"_Don't feel shame,_" Dark Rey softly admonished from over her left shoulder. "_You should feel **pride** in your first creation._"

She had made this weapon first, before she made her yellow lightsaber. She had recoiled at the finished product and shoved it into a box never to be seen again, much like she had with her new satin black outfit. And then she covered it up with something more acceptable, with the yellow lightsaber and virgin white outfit.

Taking a shuddering breath and clenching her fist, she ignited the lightsaber. The two emitters hissed and blew to life, illuminating her in blood red as the two unstable blades spit and crackled. With a smooth motion of her arm, she swung the lightsaber to lock the hilt into its staff form.

She looked to Dark Rey, and felt a bit squeamish under her gaze of pride. After her transformation, it was like she was looking in a mirror. It made her uncomfortable.

"_Don't be afraid of who you are,_" she said to her once again. But this time, Rey didn't feel unadulterated fear at the statement. It wasn't a taunt this time, but rather it was a genuine piece of wisdom. "_Use your power, and you won't lose anyone else ever again._"

That sealed it for Rey. She never wanted to lose those she loved ever again. Though she felt burdened, she also felt a sense of purpose now. She nodded her understanding at Dark Rey.

With that, her darker self disappeared, but the darkness did not disappear alongside her. Rather, Dark Rey only disappeared because now Rey had _become_ her; she had become the very thing she feared the most.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**And there's chapter four, and what an eventful one it is! Rey pulls an Anakin killing the sand people, she's completely lost touch with Ben, a handful of people have felt the huge spike in darkness but only Cal and Merrin take it seriously, and Rey undergoes a transformation after her dark self confronts her.**_

_**This is one chapter I've been waiting to write because Rey's darker side was always what interested me the most about her, excluding her relationship with Ben. She's incredibly hypocritical when it comes to Light Side vs Dark Side, to the point that, in my opinion, she doesn't seem to recognize the difference between them. She only follows the light because that's what everyone expects of her. But what frustrates me is that she never has to face the consequences of her darker tendencies, like every single time she hurt Ben, whether it be physically or emotionally. This time, however, she does. It's impossible to ignore or justify slaughtering an entire town indiscriminately. Anakin couldn't get away with killing children, so why should Rey?**_

_**Besides literally every scene with Adam Driver including the Reylo scenes (because come on, he's the best; and he and Daisy really had excellent chemistry) the Dark Rey scene was my favorite in TROS. I really liked the way Daisy Ridley played Dark Rey. It really reminded me of how Helena Bonham Carter played Bellatrix Lestrange in a way, and she's one of my favorite Harry Potter villains because of that portrayal. I'm just disappointed that we didn't get more Dark Rey, because that was by far my favorite scene in the whole trilogy with just Rey. Plus, she just looked so cool with that outfit and lightsaber.**_

_**I had always liked the idea of Rey confronting her greatest fear – her dark self – and failing to overcome it. Rey actually has a terrible track record when it comes to her successes. She's failed at most of what she's set out to do. Sure, she beat a weakened Ben on Starkiller, but it didn't change the fact that Han was dead. It was just her taking out her anger. She failed to bring Luke back, failed to turn Ben away from the First Order, and Dark Rey effortlessly beat her on the Death Star. So did Ben, as a matter of fact; he had her on the ground. She only won because she didn't realize he had stopped fighting. The only successes to her name are moving the rocks and ultimately beating the Emperor, but even the latter can't be solely attributed to her. If it weren't for Ben showing up when he did, she would've given in to what the Emperor wanted.**_

_**Much of the combat scenes was influenced by Jedi: Fallen Order, because let's face it: it has the best lightsaber fighting out of any Star Wars game so far.**_

_**Also, don't expect Force-sensitive Finn here, because that's utterly ridiculous and only exists for fanservice's sake. Here, he merely has a close connection to Rey and only feels her because of that. Think of it like how Padmé was able to feel Anakin in ROTS, but it's only one way, because clearly Rey isn't as close to Finn as he is to her.**_

_**Lastly, I want to give a thank you to everyone who's stuck around so far. The fact that people are reading this really does make my day. Every time I get a review, I take so much time responding to it because I really do cherish them. So, if you'd like to, then follow, favorite, and leave a review.**_


	5. Chapter 5

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Five**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

"Oh, I've got a bad feeling about this," Poe muttered as he gazed upon the rising sun out the window. Sunrises were always lovely, even on Coruscant. That combination of natural beauty combined with man-made ingenuity made for an interesting contrast that somehow complimented one another.

"You _always_ get a bad feeling when it comes to political maneuvering," Finn remarked at the obvious statement.

"Yeah, and for good reason." Poe turned around to face everyone else. "Because I'm not good at this sort of thing."

"So why not find someone who is?" Jannah proposed, raising an eyebrow sardonically.

Poe glanced around, and caught Zorii's visor tilt towards him in a meaningful way. He remembered the little talk they had which ultimately was about the same thing. He knew she was right: he didn't have to go it alone. "Got someone in mind?" he asked Jannah.

"Lando," she dropped.

"Lando?" Poe questioned, uncomprehending.

"If I may elaborate, General Calrissian may be the best fit for leading a new government. His experience in governing Bespin and its resulting flourishment certainly speak for themselves," C-3PO logically inserted his own opinion.

R2-D2 booped an obvious agreement from his side, in such a way as to make anyone who thought otherwise feel like an idiot.

D-0's tiny self had nothing to say. He knew nothing about the going-ons of this new group of people who had taken him in. His cone head merely swiveled from subject to subject in observation.

Poe thought about it for a bit. He knew Lando was experienced as a governor from Leia, and was good at it. And considering he was pretty much the only person available for the job… "Okay, then." He nodded at Jannah. "Call him."

"Already on his way." She waved her comm link. At his befuddled look, she rolled her eyes. "I knew you'd be for it anyway. All you needed was convincing."

He instinctively glanced towards Zorii again at Jannah's words. "Yeah, I was convinced alright."

He saw the former bounty hunter look down, flattered. She may have a hard skin, but he knew that once that outer skin was breached, she was sweet at her core.

"I just understand now that we need someone who's capable of leading people in these difficult times, and I know I'm not that person."

"Perhaps _I_ can help."

The new and unexpected voice in the room took everyone by surprise. Both Zorii and Jannah drew their weapons – the former bounty hunter beating the former stormtrooper to the punch thanks to her dual E-851 blaster pistols being specially designed for quick-drawing – and Poe nearly drew his. But Finn's shout of delight stopped him and made him actually process who he was about to pull his blaster pistol on.

"REY!"

Rey was quickly smothered into a bearhug by Finn, and Poe quickly followed. Both of them were just so relived to see her again that they didn't even take notice of her notable discomfort. Their hugging bothered her now.

"Oh, Master Jedi Rey! It is so wonderful to see you again!" 3P0 greeted with his usual eccentricity.

"Please 3P0, don't call me that," Rey grimaced and looked away as she gently pushed Finn and Poe off of her. After Mos Eisley, she couldn't consider herself a Jedi at all. "Just because I'm the only known Force-user left doesn't make me a Jedi by default."

"Oh, that's something I actually wanted to talk to you about, Rey!" Finn said, excitement lacing his face.

Rey raised a prompting eyebrow.

"I think I might have the Force!"

She burst into laughter. It was a rather disturbing cackle that put goosebumps on everyone's arms. It served to further convince Zorii to keep her pistols up and aimed at her.

While Jannah had lowered her energy bow, she did still keep an arrow nocked just in case. She had only known her for a little bit and didn't even know her all that well beyond how she was Force-sensitive, so she was still wary and untrusting of Rey.

As was Rose. She could tell from the moment Rey revealed herself that not only was something off, but also that she was threatening. She was definitely not the same girl who left the Resistance.

Kaydel merely observed closely. She did find something off about Rey, but not enough to act on it.

Rey's cackle served as a wake-up call for Finn and Poe. As they stepped back from her cautiously, they finally took notice of her all-black outfit and the gleaming lightsaber hilt on her belt. It was so reminiscent of what they remembered about Kylo Ren's outfit that it placed them on edge.

Eventually Rey recovered. "You don't have the Force," she bluntly told Finn, a distinctly amused quirk of her lips visible.

Finn was taken aback. It didn't quite make sense to him. "But… I've been able to feel you for a long time now. I felt you die," he pointed out.

Rey was in front of him in an instant, rage and a dash of agony flashing across her face at the reminder that she only lived because Ben Solo traded his life for hers. "Do _not EVER_ bring that time up again," she seethed, jabbing her left index finger in his chest.

He took notice of the black ring on that finger, reminiscent in design of Leia's. He didn't quite understand why she was dressed up the way she was or why her attitude changed so drastically, but it made him uneasy all the same. Finn nodded quickly, the point being driven home that she didn't want to talk about it.

She stepped back. "Anyways, feeling just me isn't proof you're Force-sensitive."

Finn observed as she folded her hands behind her back. She looked so regal like that, yet so condescending also. "What do you mean?"

"If you were Force-sensitive, you'd be able to feel _everyone,_ not just me. Feeling just me only proves that you have a strong connection to me."

Looking elsewhere, she caught notice of Zorii, and how she had not lowered her pistols from her.

Rey's gaze hardened on her. "I thought I was okay in your eyes."

The former bounty hunter recognized her own words from their first meeting being thrown back at her, and so mockingly too. "I didn't think you cared about that," she shot back.

Rey's lip curled up in twisted satisfaction as she relished in stirring up the pot. "I don't."

The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a lightsaber. Rey could tell she was angering Zorii, and she found delight in it. The former bounty hunter just couldn't stand the condescension from the dark princess-attituded Force-user.

"Whoa, hey now!" Poe stepped between them, gently taking the former bounty hunter's arms and coercing her to lower her pistols. It spoke volumes to the trust between them that she allowed such an action at all.

"Girls, come on. This isn't the time for arguing!" Finn said. His intervention earned him a smoldering glare from Rey.

"Tell that to the smart-ass little girl," Zorii snipped.

"Come out from behind that mask if you're such a grown-up woman!" Rey snarled towards her. She hated her young age of twenty being tossed around as an insult like that.

"GIRLS!" Rose's shout pierced the large office.

It was enough to get Rey and Zorii to stop their argument and look towards her. As small a presence as she was, Rose could make herself heard when she wanted.

"If you could stop for a minute, I think we have more important things to do now." Rose pointed out the window.

When everyone looked, it was plain as day. Though not quite so much to Rey, as she was the only one out of the loop. Regardless, she knew something important was going on just from the little she had heard so far. An ostentatious yet simultaneously reserved ship descended down towards the landing pad, next to the _Millenium Falcon_ Rey had come in. Only one such person could be arriving in such a way.

"Lando," Poe noted, punching the air with glee.

XXXXXXXXXX

Chewie roared his displeasure with Lando.

"Hey, you gotta see it from my point of view!" the former rogue argued as they descended down the ramp. "Would you like it if I came to your place and stashed whiskey everywhere?"

A few sarcastic moans returned.

Lando let out a laugh. "You're right. Bad comparison, fur and alcohol."

Lando Calrissian along with his old friend Chewie watched the younger generation of the Resistance come out to meet him on the landing pad. His interest was immediately drawn to the black wraith leading them.

"Hello, what have we here?" he drawled out suavely, looking Rey up and down with a curious grin.

The girl couldn't be sure if he was just being a flirt or if there was a greater meaning to his words, but it made her self-conscious regardless. She had never gotten accustomed to people examining her. She always felt uncomfortable when she was under the microscope, because she was just waiting for someone to find something wrong with her and cast her out.

But not this time, she swore. She was reborn into a new woman, one that did not stand by and let the galaxy trample over her. She would not just take her place. She would own it.

"I hope you took care of my ship."

Rey tilted her head, grinning. "I believe it's _my_ ship now."

Chewie huffed a laugh at her claim on the ship. Leave it to her to stake her claim on what was hers and never renege on it. He came in for a hug, which Rey allowed, but the discomfort returned and she broke the hug soon after.

"Why are you here, though?" she asked Lando, inquisitive for answers she had not yet been told.

"No one told you?"

"I only just got here." Rey decided to give her friends the benefit of the doubt. There really was no time to inform her beforehand.

"Ah." Lando nodded in understanding. "Well, the Resistance asked me to be the leader of their new government."

"Oh?" Rey's eyes sharpened on Lando like a predator at that little token of information. His taking up of leadership put a block in her path.

"Yeah. Get it out of the junta phase and make something legitimate so they can focus on eliminating any First Order holdouts," Lando continued, seemingly unaware of the belligerence he faced from her.

"You know, speaking of just getting here," Poe inserted, attracting her attention. He grinned in barely restrained excitement. "I haven't seen my droid yet. Where's my little buddy?"

Rey fell silent. How was she to break the news that the ball droid was gone forever, to his master no less? And that didn't even consider how difficult she herself found it to talk about. BB-8 meant something to her, too. The droid had been her first real friend.

She faced away from Poe, deliberating how to even begin. "I made a mistake. I failed to realize how hostile Tatooine was to droids. I let my guard down, and some scrappers… caught him. And they… tore him apart, beyond repair."

She turned around, and she could see Poe felt just like how she felt. The unshed tears in her eyes were mirrored by the moisture within his. She noticed Zorii step forward and comfort him, something she appreciated even despite her bad outlook of the former bounty hunter.

"I made sure those responsible paid for their crime," she continued, a determined resolve shining through. "But that's why I've come back. I want to stop this from happening ever again. I _will not_ lose anyone else. And I will do whatever it takes to achieve that. Nothing will stand in my way." She ended as she looked at Lando like he did stand in her way.

It was a statement that everyone felt vividly, but everyone felt differently about her declaration. Finn, as he always was with Rey, was on her side. He never doubted her, had never had any reason to. He didn't see one now.

Rose, Jannah, and Kaydel didn't really know how to feel. Each of them held their own doubts but didn't lack so much faith as to openly object.

Poe and Zorii were more indisposed however as the pilot mourned the loss of his little buddy and the former bounty hunter did her best to help him through it. They paid no mind as the rest of the entourage headed back inside, instead staying on the landing pad together.

As Rey passed, though, she and Zorii locked gazes. What the former bounty hunter received was a glare, one that warned her to stay out of the way.

Zorii gave no sign that she acknowledged it beyond just staring back at her. From the life she lived, and the experience gained through said life, she wasn't so easily intimidated.

When they were all gone, the former bounty hunter swiftly removed her helmet, dropping it and embracing a silently crying Poe.

"Just let it out," she soothed, rubbing his back.

He let out a shaky breath, not quite ready to speak. Instead, he just clung to her. He was greatly upset by the loss of his little buddy, but this woman, this woman he took for granted, was really helping him. She didn't even know BB-8 yet she could still tell that he was important to him. She just knew him so well.

After a minute, they parted. "Okay?" she gently asked.

"No… but better than I was." He rubbed at his more reddened eyes. "Thank you," he said sincerely.

She didn't register her own nod because she was caught under his gaze. Poe always managed to invigorate something within her, without fail. She thought it silly to deny how he was an attractive man, because it was so obvious. Anyone with functioning eyes could tell he was a magnificently attractive man, even when he was at his lowest.

She eventually realized she was staring at him for far too long and awkwardly broke away. She picked up her helmet, now facing away from him.

"So… what do you think of Rey? What she just said?" Poe filled the void of silence.

The topic of Rey made her stare down at her helmet in contemplation. "What do _you_ think?" she turned his question back around on him, unwilling to answer for herself. She knew he considered Rey important and would value her opinions, so Zorii wanted to respect that, even though she didn't particularly like her now.

"I mean…" Poe fumbled a bit on how to express his feelings. "She's changed, but I understand where she's coming from. She wants to stop all this meaningless death. Who am I to oppose that?"

She nodded, accepting his answer for what it was. She may not have agreed, but she respected his view.

Her lack of response prompted him to ask, "What're you thinking about?" He walked up behind her, looking over her shoulder to see what she was looking at.

Zorii stared down at her helmet, remembering Rey talking about it as if it was something she had hid herself behind. In truth, she kind of was. "When you left, I never took this off. I always kept it on because there was no one I trusted enough to show myself to." She looked to him, resolve filling her. She wouldn't be brought down by Rey's belittlement, but she also found it unnecessary to even have it now. "But I don't need it anymore."

He understood the truth in her words. She didn't need it anymore because they had met again, and she trusted him enough to see her true self. He nodded at her and took a step back, letting her do what she needed to do.

She tossed her helmet forward and up into the air, then quickly drew one of her pistols and shot it. It split apart into dozens of pieces. The shattered remains rained off the landing pad and down into the pits of the Coruscant underworld.

She and Poe recognized the irony of it. The destruction of her mask and the shattered pieces falling into the underworld paralleled her own decision to leave the criminal life behind and ascend to a higher calling, a calling that brought her back to Poe.

XXXXXXXXXX

Lando exhaled as he stretched his arms above him. "Whoo, what a day."

He fixed himself a relaxing drink in his darkened rooms. His definition of a 'relaxing drink' translated to a shot of Corellian whiskey. He made it a more regular thing to take such a drink for the past year ever since he got word Han had died. It was the way the scoundrel would've wanted to be remembered.

He took a weary seat on his couch, then raised his glass in a toast. "To Han, you old pirate," he toasted before knocking back his shot.

In the darkness of his rooms, the spit and crackle betraying the ignition of unstable lightsaber blades filled the area as the walls were shadowed in blood red light.

"To Han," Rey chillingly voiced her agreement as she held her extended double-bladed lightsaber. "May no one else suffer his fate."

Lando didn't break from his relaxed state. He wasn't really intimidated by her, not because she wasn't fear-inducing, but more because his experience allowed him to persevere even in the face of fear. It was something he was forced to learn after meeting Darth Vader. "I had a feeling you'd come by," he noted as he appraised her. His laid-back nature never deserted him even now.

"Then you know why I'm here." Rey sinuously advanced, like a serpent stalking its prey.

The former smuggler shook his head in amazement. "You really are just like him, aren't you?"

Rey stopped, standing opposite him. Only a table separated them now. Because she stopped, Lando could tell he had caught her off guard.

"Sneaking around in the shadows and manipulating events so you can put yourself into a position of power all while presenting an amicable exterior… Your grandfather was the exact same way, dear."

"So, Leia told you," Rey assumed, purposely holding herself back but she tensed up all the same. She still didn't quite know how to feel about Leia just ignoring her lineage like it meant nothing when to her it changed everything.

Lando gently shook his head. "She didn't need to." He didn't exactly deny it, but to him it didn't really matter. "I may not have known he was a Force-user until Luke told me about him, but looking back I can see he was the architect behind the creation of the Empire. He was a real snake. He destroyed the Jedi because they were a threat to him, just like you want to destroy those who are a threat to you. The resemblance between you two is uncanny."

Her lips curled in disgust, her anger rousing itself at being compared to someone she utterly detested. "I'm not arguing with you over something so stupid as familial traits. I know what I'm doing here."

"I'm not sure you do." The former smuggler could tell she was severely off-balanced, even when he first met her on Pasaana. But now… "Something's been different about you, ever since you came back from Exegol. What happened?"

Rey immediately felt a surge of grief flow through her, and she turned away. She hated talking about that time, but perhaps he could understand. "I finally found the love of my life," she began unsteadily. "Ben Solo."

Lando's eyebrows went up in intrigue. He hadn't heard about his nephew for a _very_ long time. He loved the kid, and a part of him was happy someone truly loved him. Though he was curious how such a love came to be.

"He was the most wonderful man I'd ever known. He may have been a right bantha's arse at times-"

The former rogue cracked a smirk at that. He knew the boy got his sense of charm from his father.

"-but he was always there for me when I needed him most. I finally got to show him just how much I loved him. I had never been happier in my life than I was then." Rey's delightfully reminiscent face then darkened with her next words. "And then he was taken from me right after."

_Oh._ He didn't know that. He had suspected his nephew had been dead, but hearing it definitely left its mark on him. He felt his own sorrow over his death. It was very hard to hear the son of his best friend was gone.

"Do you understand now? I'm DEAD on the inside!" The snarl in Rey's voice and face was apparent as she turned back to him. "I have nothing left to live for!" The ferocity in her died down a little as she struggled to regain control over her emotions. "But then I discovered something about myself. I have _power,_ the power to prevent what happened to me from happening to anyone else. And I intend to use it." She leveled him with a glare of a thousand suns. "The only problem is that you're in the way."

He could kind of understand why she was the way she was now. She only wanted to put a stop to all the death and war. "I get it, Rey. Believe me, I do." He was the same way when he got word of Han's death, followed by Luke's, and most recently that of Leia. "But this isn't the way to go about it. Grow too obsessed with stopping something and through your own desperation you might just make it come to pass."

"I don't care," she bluntly countered. "_No_ price is too high if it puts a stopper to endless war."

She was so direct that Lando had to do a double take. If she didn't care even after he had spelled it out to her, then that meant… "Well then you're lost," he remarked resignedly.

Rey tilted her head and cracked a wicked smirk. It made her look positively insane. "When you've already lost yourself, what more do you have to lose?" She straightened out, the smirk dropping from her face as she grew severe. She held her lightsaber up so one of its blades was aimed at him. "Hand over your position to me, or you will die. This is your only warning."

Lando exhaled heavily. Rey was a woman who had lost the love of her life. Yet, it was exactly that which made her impossible to reason with. So he didn't. "If you want my position, then you'll have to kill me."

She let her saber drop to her side. Oh, how she _hated_ that defiance. It made her blood boil. She really didn't want to spill blood to get what she wanted, but if left no other choice, it was a price she would pay. "Your choice," she pointedly reminded him.

Then, with absolutely no hesitation, she shot her hand out and unleashed a lightning strike at Lando. The light was the last thing he ever saw, literally and metaphorically. He went out still doing what he could to help, not betraying himself most importantly.

She slowly stepped over to where his body had been knocked back towards and looked down on it. Smoke rose from where his body was struck. She had not just killed him. She had fried him, even if just a little.

She looked down at her hand. There was a part of her that still felt horrified at this power, and she had just used it to kill someone she had personally known. Not like the bounty hunters at Mos Eisley. It was easier to kill people she didn't know.

She clenched her hand into a fist. Yet there was such an incredible thrill that shot through her whenever she used that power. It made her feel so incredibly _powerful_ every time she unleashed it. She never wanted to lose it.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**There's chapter five! I was stuck on this one for a little while, because I found it more difficult to articulate what I wanted to happen. But I got it eventually! Anyway, Rey returns to the Resistance but with her own objectives in mind, she's begun causing discord among the gang, Zorii finally lets go of her mask, and Rey eliminates Lando.**_

_**I just couldn't help myself with taking a shit on the Force-sensitive Finn stuff. It's fucking ridiculous and only exists now because of**_** Luca****sfilm's**_** terrible marketing for TFA. Really, was it really so hard for them to just market each film for what it was and focus on the Reylo connection that is the beating heart of the ST? Whenever they did market that particular aspect, it was actually an honest representation of what we got.**_

_**I came up with the thread of the significance of Zorii's helmet on the spot. It came to me after I rethought the significance of what it means when someone has a mask in Star Wars. It means they're hiding a part of themselves away. And, at least the way I see it, the path to balance is to accept every part of yourself. So, with the destruction of her mask, Zorii has finally accepted the part of herself that longs to be by Poe's side and stopped rejecting him.**_

_**The death of Lando was hard to do, but necessary to me. I wanted to set the tone to make it feel like no one is safe. That's something I actually did enjoy about the ST: how dangerous it was and how no one was safe. Lightsaber fights in the ST actually felt dangerous. Every blow could be felt. And while it was sad to see the OT characters die, I like how they all went away in meaningful ways while also reminding everyone that no one is safe in war.**_

_**I also seriously enjoy the hell out of writing Rey on the Dark Side. So it's fun for me whenever she does terrible deeds, muhahaha! But seriously, I find Rey especially interesting when she's on the Dark Side because of her complex psychology. She's not evil for the sake of evil. She just believes she's justified. Much like how Kylo was.**_

_**Anyways, feel free to favorite, follow, and leave a review! I love responding to reviews, it always feels great.**_


	6. Chapter 6

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Six**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

The hovering casket within which Lando's body laid was pushed onto his ship. It was a day of mourning one of the galaxy's most beloved heroes. A loquacious man who, while known to deal in the illegal side of galactic affairs, never lost his sense of morality.

A crowd of people – Coruscanti residents and reestablished Senate members alike as well as Resistance members – had turned out to the landing pad to mourn as his family took his body back to their home. The pure sorrow in the air was so thick that it made one wonder if the humidity level had increased due to just how many tears were shed.

When the ship took off, everyone stayed to see it off, showing their respects to the deceased General until the very end. Once it was no longer within visible range, they split up and went their separate ways; to grieve in their own ways.

Far behind the crowd, Rey stood close to the entrance to the Senate Dome, distantly observing with her hands behind her back. Her skin had paled noticeably shortly after murdering the General. What was once sun-kissed skin had now become a sickly, whiter shade. Her face was stone cold, but close observation would note the slightest uptick of the corner of her lips.

She was detached from the whole affair. Though she knew Lando personally, she felt justified in killing him because he was in her way. Hence, she felt no guilt. And it was weakness if she did. She remembered what she was told by herself on Tatooine: '_to love is to die, and to kill is safety._' Such a beloved figure meeting their end matched that train of thought, and only reinforced her belief that she was right. Her restrained glee was in response to coming one step closer to realizing her goal.

As the crowd of mourners dispersed, Rey turned on the spot with a swish of her cloak, her determined strides leading her back into the Senate Dome. She had purpose, and would not stop until she saw it fulfilled.

Meanwhile with the Resistance, they prepared to head back inside, too. It was a difficult morning for them all, to find one of their Generals dead without explanation.

Chewie let out a mournful moan. Yet another of his family was gone. First little Ben, then Han, then Luke, then Leia, and now Lando. He honestly didn't know if it could get any worse.

Kaydel really felt for the Wookie. She was nearly moved to tears herself just from how much sorrow filled his moan. She gave him a comforting hug. Chewie returned it, but his sadness was still prominent.

Jannah couldn't control her anger at the situation and punched a pillar as hard as she could, and she instantly regretted it when the flash of pain registered.

"AGH!" she cried out of anger as well as the pain which reverberated through her hand and up her arm. She shook it, trying to wring out the pain.

She had grown close to the General, had looked up to him for guidance during the short time she knew him. So his death hit her especially hard.

Poe felt guilty. He couldn't help but blame himself. He knew he wasn't strong enough to lead a government, but he didn't want someone else to fall because of his own inadequacy. It should've been him to suffer the consequences, as he felt he rightfully deserved them.

But a gentle, gloved hand touching his arm thought differently. Empathetic green eyes silently told him that he was wrong, and that while he had a right to be upset, it was not to be because he thought it his fault.

He gave a jerky nod, understanding Zorii's gaze all too well.

Further back, Finn and Rose spoke with Harter Kalonia, Resistance medic.

"What did you find?" Rose questioned.

"The autopsy we did on General Calrissian's body has provided… mixed results," the older woman admitted, befuddled.

The other two didn't understand, either. "What do you mean?" Finn asked.

"For the most part, his body was completely intact. You'd think he just died with no explanation. From what was gathered in his chambers and the position he died, there was no significant sign of struggle. It's like he just let himself be killed."

Rose didn't understand. Why would Lando just _let_ himself be killed? Something didn't add up. "There are _zero_ clues whatsoever as to what happened?"

"Well, there _is_ one anomaly we found. He seemed to have a handful of small yet highly concentrated burns on his torso, in no particular pattern." The elder woman tapped a finger to her lips in thought. "It's most peculiar. The only time I've seen burns like his is when someone got electrocuted, but these burns are even more intense than that. It almost seems as if he was hit by a lightning strike."

"But he was inside," Rose argued. "There's no way he could've been struck by lightning. What, are we supposed to assume whoever killed him could shoot lightning from their hands or something? That's ridiculous."

Finn's eyes shot wide in alarm at Rose's words. As the other two discussed, it dawned on him that it might not be so ridiculous an assumption. But at the same time, his realization was sickening. There was only one person he knew who could shoot lightning from their hands. And it was just impossible for it to be her. It couldn't be.

He had seen Rey and Ren when they fought for possession of that First Order AAL on Pasaana. It had seemed like it was a dead struggle, with neither one being able to pull it closer to them. Until white hot lightning had unexpectedly shot out of Rey's hand and blew the transport to smithereens. He wasn't usually afraid of the Force and what Rey could do with it, but that particular instance was _terrifying._

"Finn?" Rose shook him lightly. "Hey, Finn! What is it? Talk to me."

He snapped out of his trance, but he suddenly felt clammy. Logic told him that the only possible suspect was Rey, but his heart refused to believe his best friend would, or even _could,_ do something so dark.

Rose's unwaveringly loyal gaze bored into him. "I-I…" he stuttered, but clammed up. It was just too much for him to even voice the thought, because that made it real.

Her eyebrows went up as she realized what was going on. Whatever it was he wanted to say, he was just too nervous to say it outright and had to be coaxed. With that understanding in mind, she turned towards Kalonia. "Excuse us."

Rose dragged Finn down the corridors of the Senate Dome looking for some place to chat privately. Soon enough she found a deserted break room. Finn numbly allowed himself to be tugged along.

"Finn, what is it?"

"No-no! It's impossible!" Finn shook his head desperately. He didn't even register who was talking to him. He was stuck in that moment of realization.

"Finn!" Rose shook him. She needed him calm. Though, she realized perhaps it may be better if she calmed herself first. "Finn," she repeated, this time calm. She had his attention now. Her eyes patiently plead with him. "What is it you know?"

She saw him shake his head in panicked denial. It confused her. Why wouldn't he talk?

"Finn… If you know something, then you need to tell me." Her hands slid to gently grasp his. She really didn't want to play this card, but he gave her no choice. "It's the right thing to do."

Those words hit Finn with profound meaning. He remembered saying those words to Poe back when he made the decision to desert from the First Order. Doing the right thing was all he wanted. It was what he strived towards.

But in this case, doing the right thing meant turning against Rey, his best friend. And he didn't know if he could do that. As far as he was concerned, she had done nothing to earn such a betrayal.

Yet, at the same time, it was the right thing to do to come forward with information that could help uncover the truth, no matter how absurd. And ultimately, his morally just side won out.

"When we were on Pasaana," he began, "there was a moment where Rey and Ren were having this sort of tug-of-war fight with a transport." Rose nodded, letting him continue. "Neither of them seemed able to bring it closer to them. It was a draw. But then…"

Sensing his hesitation, Rose soothingly ran her thumbs over the back of his hands, trying to coax him to continue.

"… then all of a sudden Rey just… _shot lightning_ from her hand… and blew up the ship." Rose jerked back in shock, but Finn quickly grabbed her hands. "Stop, stop! Listen to me Rose! I only told you this because I trust you not to immediately try to have her arrested. She's innocent, I'm telling you!"

She didn't know what to say. She had a feeling Rey was responsible, but at the same time she thought maybe she was being a bit unfair. Even now, with a testimony that Rey was indeed capable of murder through lightning strike, she thought perhaps she wasn't being fair to her. Who was she to just assume without gathering convicting evidence?

She nodded slowly. "Innocent until proven guilty," she said. At Finn's panicked and betrayed look, she was quick to clarify. "Finn, calm down! I won't tell anyone else, and I get why you don't think she could commit murder. It's unfair to just accuse her without evidence, but you need to understand that she's the only link we can pursue."

Finn started to turn away, but Rose took his face in her hands. She could see the betrayal in his beautifully expressive eyes, and it tore at her heart to see it directed at her.

"Finn…" she softly plead. "I'm not going to go after her. I'm not assuming she killed him. I _will_ keep an eye on her, but that doesn't mean she's guilty in my eyes. I only want to watch her because she might be of help to us. Do you understand what I mean? I just want justice for Lando, like we all do."

It began to sink in that she wasn't against Rey. She was simply looking at it from a logical standpoint and not being blinded by emotion. She just wanted to do what was right, something he admired very much about her. He eventually nodded his understanding.

She began to smile. She was happy that they were no longer at odds with each other. "Good. Now come on." She took his hand and led them throughout the building. "We missed most of Rey's speech."

Because of Lando's untimely death, Rey had stepped in to fill his role as the leader of… well, the Resistance junta. There was really no better way to call it now, but they were trying to create something legitimate. Hence, she was currently giving an induction speech, like an actual elected official would. It was a calculated move, to make it appear as though order was reestablished. Untrue, of course, as there were still First Order holdout cells on the planet.

When they arrived at an empty circular platform, they managed to catch the last of her speech.

"This galaxy has been in turmoil for roughly seven decades now, and not just during the wars," Rey voiced from atop the central podium once used, ironically, by the Chancellor – her own grandfather – so long ago, and in such a similarly underhanded way as him also. Where they differed however, was in her genuine passion. The truth of her passion echoed throughout the whole Senate Chamber. "During the lulls as well, chaos plagued the systems. Not even the New Republic could fix that. Under their rule this disorder was allowed to flourish." Under her black hood, her much more paled face – a result of how steeped in the Dark Side she was – was severe, accusing, and most of all unyielding. "Under _my_ rule, it will _end._"

Never again would she lose someone to the chaos of war. Not after Ben.

Thunderous applause met her. She had the people's trust. She had presented her argument for order in such a way that it convinced everyone that she was the right person to follow.

Well, except for a few people. One human man in particular with relatively untamed dark brown hair made a tsk sound with his fangs. Distinctly _Togruta_ fangs. "I don't trust her," he remarked.

His green-haired companion snorted amusedly, as if this was a regular occurrence. "Senator Mika Bonteri of Onderon, since when do you trust anyone?" he sarcastically quipped.

"Oh, shut up, Jacen," Mika Bonteri retorted with no real heat as he turned to leave his circular platform, his senator's cape billowing behind.

Jacen Syndulla caught up to his side. "You're just paranoid, man. Ease up."

"Paranoid for good reason," Mika countered as they walked. "I don't know her, and from what it looks, she doesn't seem open to new acquaintances. She won't even give out her last name, for kriff's sake. Plus, did you feel her through the Force? Something about her feels… _wrong._"

"Well I can agree with that, but let's not be too hasty in judgment." Jacen raised a pointed eyebrow at the man he saw as an older brother. "Didn't Aunt Ahsoka always say to never just assume things about people you've never met?"

The human/Togruta hybrid remembered that very well. "Yeah. She brought it up every time she told me about how she and Dad met. How he wasn't what she expected."

"Soooo…?" Jacen trailed off with a roguish smile, arms spread. Wiggling his eyebrows up and down, he was a real charmer.

Mika sighed in concession. "Point taken."

The human/Twi'lek hybrid nudged his shoulder. "C'mon you grump. Your mom knew what she was talking about." He then took the lead in their walk, turning and walking backwards to keep talking. "If she didn't, we never would've gotten to know those two Nightsisters better. I wouldn't have my Nat, and _you_ wouldn't have your Ana."

"_Alright,_ you made your point!" Mika loudly said, a blush crawling up his pale skin. He grew embarrassed when his love life was brought up.

Jacen laughed heartily. He wasn't much younger than him, but the natural-born pilot always got a kick of just how much older Mika behaved thanks to his grumpier attitude. "Anyway, Mom's been wanting to celebrate ever since Ana and Nat came back, and she picked later today for it."

The son of Lux Bonteri and Ahsoka Tano nodded, though not without a sarcastic 'I knew that already' look stemming from his ocean blue eyes. His Auntie Hera – Jacen's mom – loved gathering their large family together, to the point she'd look for any excuse to bring everyone together, especially more recently when the family started thinning out thanks to the war.

"Afterwards…" Jacen made a point of fiddling the lightsaber hanging off his waist in what Mika liked to consider an uncivilized way. It just hung off a loop, like it was a key on a keyring. He had a rogue's grin peel across his face. "… we could go for a bit of sparring, if you like. You look like you could use it. And since Kylo Ren's gone, we don't have to hide anymore."

Mika's hand gravitated towards the lightsaber holstered primly at his waist as he turned over the offer in his head. It had been some time since he had last used it, and admittedly a part of him was itching to light it up again. Finally, he grew a sly grin and put his hand out. "You're on."

The two friends – as close as brothers – shook on it.

XXXXXXXXXX

The _Mantis_ exited hyperspace as soon as the ship reached Tatooine.

"This is definitely it," Cal remarked to Merrin. "I can feel the darkness coming from here."

The Nighsister nodded, silencing the ship's speaker system and putting an end to that throat-singing Outer Rim metal band her Jedi seemed to love listening to before she raised comms with the Mos Eisley Spaceport from the copilot's seat. "Ground, this is the _Mantis_ requesting permission to land. Over," she commed as Cal prepared the ship to enter atmosphere.

The Nightsister got no response. It made her face scrunch up in wary curiosity. It was unusual to get zero response from a spaceport's air traffic control.

"Ground, this is the _Mantis_ requesting permission to land. Over." Her second try gave no further success. She looked to Cal, confused and filled with unease. "There is no response."

Cal hummed in thought. To head down or not was the question. Ultimately, his desire to investigate won out. "Then we land anyway."

Merrin nodded, not surprised by her Jedi's choice, and turned her focus to the monitors.

Cal took them down to land at the spaceport, touching down under the night sky. Merrin picked up her red cloak and donned it, drawing up the red hood, while Cal summoned BD-1 with a quick, "Come on, buddy." The droid jumped to his usual perch of his back, and then they descended down the ramp. As soon as they stepped foot on the sand, Cal could clearly feel the shroud of the Dark Side over Mos Eisley. It made him feel nauseous. "It feels like… like a cloud of darkness is hanging over this place."

The Nightsister agreed, though she was not as affected by the darkness thanks to growing up among it. But after reaching out with her magick, she did make one observation. "There are no signs of life here."

The Jedi didn't believe that, and it showed in his frown. "Come on, there's got to be at least-"

"No, Cal," she interrupted, raising a hand for silence. "I mean it. There is no sign of life in this entire town besides us." Hearing the seriousness in her voice put a barb of fear in both of their hearts.

The last time Merrin had felt such crushing loss in the Force was when all her Sisters were killed all those years ago. For Cal, it had been Order 66. And yet both of them felt just how much _loss_ permeated the Force in Mos Eisley. It was like a bottomless pit of pain and suffering and agonizing loss; like a wound that would never heal.

As they walked through the town – BD-1 jumping ahead to scan everything he could find – the only sounds they could hear were those of their own footsteps and the winds. It was so quiet, like it was a ghost town. It did nothing to alleviate their unease. Rather, quite the opposite: it only served to fester it.

Then, BD-1 beeped in revolt after he scanned something truly and utterly _horrific._

Dead corpses plagued the town. The rotten stench of death was so strong they both were forced to cover their noses to stop the nausea from bubbling up. The worst of it, though, was when they caught sight of a child no more than six years old wrapped in the arms of her dead parents. She had a massive wound in her chest, one made by a lightsaber, they noticed. Her dead face was frozen in an eternal scream.

That proved too much for Cal. He bent over and hurled at the revolting horror.

Merrin instantly was at his side soothingly rubbing his back, simultaneously trying to stop herself from hurling also. As parents themselves, the sight of that dead child and her parents nauseated them more than anything else.

He coughed roughly when he was done. "Who could've done this?" he asked, horrified.

She shook her head, unable to answer. She understood how he felt. This was almost _too_ dark a deed to behold, even for her.

"Is that why there's no life here? Because someone massacred this place?" Cal looked around, sickeningly shellshocked by the discovery.

She sensed it was a rhetorical question. He knew the truth, but just had a hard time believing it. So did she.

She reached out again, and felt a pull. Something – or _someone,_ it was unclear – was pulling her towards the open desert. She couldn't tell exactly, but she felt something drawing her there. Whatever it was, she knew they had to find it.

She stood up. "Cal, come on. I feel something. Are you okay to drive?"

"Yeah, I'm good," he nodded, only just getting over the gruesome scene as he shakily stood up. BD-1 took up his favored perch of his back.

The Jedi listened to his woman and found them an abandoned speeder. Merrin only asked that he drive because she was not a great driver. At least, not as good as Cal was. She trusted him more than she trusted herself when it came to piloting vehicles.

Cal quickly got the speeder up and running. "So where are we going?"

"That way." Merrin pointed out into the desert.

And then they were off, hoping to not run into any more horrors.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Over there!" the Nightsister pointed to an abandoned homestead in the middle of the open desert.

The Jedi brought the speeder to a stop close to the desert house. He swiftly made his way out and around to Merrin's side to help her out, something the Nightsister was surprised and flattered by. Even in the most serious moments, he found a way to still show his love for her, and it made her feel like that teenager that first met him all those years ago, all over again.

But enough of that. It was time to be serious again. She extended her senses, and knew with certainty what she was looking for was here. "It's here," she let Cal know.

The calling was so strong it felt like it was gnawing at her. Furthermore, she sensed a darkness suffocating it. It gave her a real eerie feeling.

As they approached, Cal noticed something sticking up out of the sand. It looked like part of a staff. BD-1 scanned it, unnecessary because Cal could already tell it was a lightsaber. Even still, something about it felt special. Like it was crying out for help.

Merrin felt much the same. She could just about hear the screaming from the object. It sounded like… like _raw agony._

It was strange. Cal picked it up to investigate. He then reached out, using his special Psychometry ability to sense this object's past.

_Immediately, he noticed how the lightsaber's yellow blade ominously hummed to life from one end in the past vision._

_"No, please! I'm sorry!" he heard and saw a scrapper beg for her life. He was along for the ride as the blade was brought up by a calloused yet feminine hand._

_"REY, NO!" he heard a desperate man's deep timbre yell towards him from out-of-sight._

_And then, the blade came down, cutting the pleading scrapper down. Simultaneously, he felt an unbelievable amount of agony and heard an anguished scream that seemed to never end. Not even after the yellow lightsaber had brought death and destruction on a level he hadn't seen since Order 66._

_Cal was powerless watching from this girl's point of view – Rey, he inferred from the man's plea – as she wielded the Dark Side of the Force like an animalistic, avenging Dark Lady of the Sith._

_The screaming continued. It never stopped. This man was in so much pain that it made Cal want to throw up again. It was so sickening, so fear-inducing, so terrible an act._

"Cal!"

Finally, the vision ended. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Merrin, looking at him with deep worry.

When he tried to move, he realized he was on the ground now. He tried to stand up, but immediately fell back down. He was too shaken by the vision he just witnessed. It took a moment for him to realize that the lightsaber was still in his grasp.

"I saw what happened," he started. His voice was not the usual relaxed, sometimes sardonic, tone he normally spoke in. He was frightened. "A girl… A girl called Rey. She killed them. She killed them all… with this."

He lifted the lightsaber to her in gesture. Merrin took his hands into her own, trying to just be there for him. She knew him well enough to know he needed her now.

"Not just the men, but the women and children too. She slaughtered them like animals. She hated them!" He shook his head, unable to even comprehend it himself even after feeling what Rey felt. "Hated them so much!"

"What else?" she whispered, horrified by what she heard so far.

"There was a man… When she killed the first one, there was a man, _constantly_ screaming in agony, like his soul was being ripped apart… He never stopped screaming, not even after she killed everyone. I can still hear it now."

It wasn't long before Merrin realized he wasn't waxing poetic; she could still hear screaming, too. Her hand brushed over the lightsaber, and that's when it felt the worst.

Confused, she reached out again, and she gasped in shock at what she sensed. Now she was sure it wasn't just something calling to her, but _someone._ "Cal, there is someone in this!"

The Jedi tilted his head, lost. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said!" She stood up, energized like never before as she held the lightsaber up. "There is someone's _soul_ inside this weapon!" She could see Cal wasn't following, so she explained as best she could. "As her prodigy, Mother once taught me about a special ilk of magick that allows you to store a piece of your soul inside an object as a way to tether yourself to the living realm and therefore achieve immortality so long as the object isn't destroyed. It can only be done if you murder someone in cold blood, though. The murder splits your soul, and that piece of soul then goes into the object. We called it a Horcrux."

Cal's eyes went wide at that description. "That sounds… really dark," he said hesitantly. For the first time in his life, he was scared of Nightsister magick. Merrin offered him a helping hand, and he accepted it, standing back up.

"Yes," she nodded in agreement. "It is the darkest of our magick, dark enough to be forbidden. I've never used it myself. To use it at all means to be put to death by the coven."

Now he was confused. "But wouldn't they still be alive? Since they used this magic and put a piece of themselves into this Horcrux?"

The Nightsister shook her head. "Living as a Horcrux is an agony like no other. It is perhaps even worse than total death. The way we see it, it is a punishment that fits the crime." Merrin then lifted the lightsaber to examine it. "But this one is unique. This soul feels split, yet also does not. It feels like it was broken and then made whole again. And now it feels like one part of an even greater whole." She tapped into her magick to investigate more, and the screaming cursed her ears once more. But the mother in her recognized a cry for help, and she was determined to answer. She pushed through, and sensed something most interesting. "This man has an extremely strong bond with someone. Like ours, but even stronger. So strong that he survived even this without losing his mind."

Cal thought he was starting to get it. Perhaps she wasn't insane upon claiming that someone's very soul was inside a lightsaber. But one thing still confused him. "But the girl wasn't a Nightsister. How could she do this?"

"Cal, you and I both know that my magick is just another way of wielding the Force. Any Force-user could wield magick if we taught them how." Merrin put a finger to her grey lips and thought. "Perhaps this was not done intentionally. I have heard of times where a soul is so fractured or so agonized that another piece can break away unintentionally. That may have occurred with this girl." She lightly nodded in agreement with herself. "Yes, and then maybe that piece of soul – the part that belonged to this man – nixed itself onto the nearest living thing." She held up the lightsaber in reference.

"The kyber crystal within," it dawned on Cal. At last, he understood what his woman was saying. But that left one last question. "But what do we do with it, then?"

That left the Nightsister stumped. What do they do with this? Nothing came to her, but at the same time the mother in her refused to leave someone behind when they so clearly needed her help. If only there was some way to bring this man back into the living realm…

She froze as the realization hit her. There _was_ a way to bring people back into the living realm. And she had done it before, a very long time ago.

"I am going to resurrect him," she stated. She then looked to her Jedi, her warm amber eyes pleading with him as she held out her hand palm down to him. "But I will need your help, Cal."

His larger hand gently enveloped her smaller one. "Always," he breathed.

It suddenly hit Merrin again: she was _incredibly_ lucky to have someone like Cal. He would always be there for her, and she couldn't help but fall in love all over again.

She blinked away the nostalgia. Now wasn't the time for daydreaming like a teenager. Someone needed her help now. "I need you to stay connected with me, and help me keep control over this spell." She noticed the slightly questioning look in his eyes, and, with a little bit of embarrassment, revealed, "Malicos was right when he said this power is beyond my control. The spell wasn't supposed to work that way. My sisters were supposed to return in all their previous glory. But instead, they were made into monsters." Then, her embarrassment turned to shame and distress. "And I was just so _angry_ with him and with you that I did not care. What if I make the same mistake again? What if I can't do it?!"

"Merrin!" Cal's voice broke through her despair. She looked into his emerald gaze. "You can do this," he reassured in that gentle, soothing, and _understanding_ tone.

That tone washed away all her worries and self-doubt. Cal always had that special way of breaking through to her. He always believed in her, and it was in that where she found belief in herself.

Sharing a final nod of newfound confidence, they slammed their bond wide-open, allowing their power to come together. Merrin lifted the lightsaber to the sky, directing her whole focus towards it as she chanted.

"_Choono slalem denni-_" She could feel the power within her and Cal manifest itself as her magick flared. "_-tay'lori olee-ay!_"

Her eyes glowed a mystic, ethereal green. Her green ichor that carried out her magick swirled up out of her and into the lightsaber. Spiritually, her magick began a painstaking process as it began separating the entrapped soul from the kyber crystal.

She was in a trance as she directed her magick to carry out her will. Cal meanwhile concentrated on feeding his power over to her, and the strain was prevalent from his tightly shut eyes. Their whole focus was directed towards controlling the spell.

Soon, the sand around began to swirl into a whirlwind. The grains began to shape themselves into a recognizable form. Then, black clothes came flying out of the homestead and around the form, most notably a very special black shirt that had a hole in the right abdominal region.

Merrin then felt a change that overlapped with a bright, blinding light shining from the sand form as it completed its final transformation. She sensed she needed to let go now, so she did.

As soon as she let go, she heard a thud as something dropped to the ground, but it wasn't either her or Cal. She couldn't tell for herself what it was as she soon fainted for a moment thanks to exhaustion.

Her Jedi caught her, but quickly followed her example. The drain on his own power was too much to remain conscious, and he fell to the ground for a moment as well.

The former sand form's final form lied before them, rubbing their head as they leaned back on one arm. As the sunlight from the rising suns began to rise from the darkened sky, the son of the light had also risen from darkness.

Ben Solo only had one thing he could say.

"Ow."

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**THE PRODIGAL SON HAS RETURNED! Oh man, did a lot happen here! Coruscant mourns Lando, Finn's perception of Rey is in question, Rose suspects her for murder, Rey seizes power in a way her grandfather could respect, most of those with power don't suspect a thing with one notable exception in Mika Bonteri, Cal and Merrin uncover the massacre of Mos Eisley, and then they perform a spell that BRINGS BEN SOLO BACK FROM THE DEAD!**_

_**I've been waiting to write Ben Solo's return for a long time now. If you can't tell, he's my absolute favorite character. When I first thought of how Ben could come back, I was just off playing Jedi: Fallen Order, where Merrin is just raising people from the dead left and right. Then, I thought: THAT'S how he could come back! The specifics of what happened with his soul will sound familiar to anyone who's a Harry Potter fan. It's why I gave this project the codename of Projekt Horcrux. My idea of Ben and Rey after TROS was that they were two souls in one body. Then, I got the idea of what could happen if that soul got split somehow into its proper two bodies again, and then I remembered the idea of Horcruxes from Harry Potter. Then everything just fell into place.**_

_**The Merrical stuff got a lot longer than I had planned, but I just couldn't help myself. I love them so much! Well, and I also really wanted to write Ben's return so badly that I pushed myself.**_

_**Now, I have a confession. I recently became… obsessed with Luxsoka. Ahsoka Tano and Lux Bonteri, from The Clone Wars. Before, I never shipped Ahsoka with anyone, but after I saw all of the episodes with her and Lux, I was like, 'That's the only guy for her.' It got to the point that I found myself creating another OC in their son Mika Bonteri just to satisfy myself and give them a happy ending, because let's face it: Star Wars romances are severely lacking when it comes to happy endings.**_

_**The fact that I made another OC at all for this story has me concerned, but in a good way, because I spent so much time creating them and actually fleshing them out, and I KNOW that they're not main characters, which normally means I'm wasting my time but I can't help it. I even went so far as to make all of their names hold a poetic meaning for them, like Star Wars usually does with their character names. And then, I just thought it worked best to tie them all together, and Jacen Syndulla provided me with an excuse to do it. He's an actual canon character, but the only time we see him is when he's a little boy, so we don't see much of his personality other than he really enjoys flying. So he's practically like an OC anyway, as I had to flesh out personality for him as well, which gave me an excuse to create a dynamic with my other OCs and that spiraled into tying them all together and… I don't know, I think it works.**_

_**If anyone wants any kind of timeline for Mika's birth, then I've placed it as sometime in between the Rebels season two finale and the series finale. During that time, Ahsoka is completely off the grid, and could be off doing anything. For this story, I've made it so she is with Lux during that time. If you want the gist of it, then just listen to the song "Uncover" by Zara Larsson. That suits the situation I imagine them in very well.**_

_**I don't know if I said this earlier, but I want to try and stick to canon as much as possible, but there will inevitably be exceptions. Any piece of streaming media – movies, cartoons, video games, etc. – I will stick to. Books and comics, as well as anything added to the canon after the premiere of TROS, I will choose to use on my own volition. Basically whether or not I agree with it, or if I think I have a better idea.**_

_**But, yeah that's it. If you enjoyed, then feel free to follow and favorite and leave a review!**_


	7. Chapter 7

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Seven**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

Ben groaned as he rubbed his head. Everything hurt. Granted, he was used to pain, having felt some measure of it for pretty much his whole life, but it didn't make it any easier to deal with. All he could do was do what he always did: deal with it.

For a moment, though, the pain abandoned him when he laid eyes upon a droid that distinctly reminded him of a pet. It stared back at him curiously.

And then he booped out a friendly greeting.

Ben was caught off-guard. He was almost immediately flung from the extreme of suffering perhaps the greatest pain he ever felt to a normal everyday situation. It was a juxtaposition that made him pause.

"Uh, hey… BD-1," he returned, only just remembering the name the droid introduced itself with. He then sat up, arms resting over propped knees. "I'm Ben."

BD-1 chirped an inquiry. Ben noted that this droid was quite energetic and positive.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just…" he paused, the memories of saving Rey and then watching as she gave into her Dark Side running through his head. "I just went through some stuff."

The exploration droid beeped an assuming question, one which left Ben a little confused and unaware of what it meant.

"Because your mistress resurrected me…?" He passed a curious look behind BD-1 where he saw two people – older people by what he could tell – lying in the sand unconscious. He nodded towards the woman in red. "Is that your mistress?"

The droid trilled an affirmative, then added some more beeps.

"And your master, too." Ben got up and began to approach them, but paused. "I'm going to try waking them up, okay?" he notified BD-1, to which the droid nodded and scampered behind the two.

Ben knelt beside them and brought a hand to each of their temples, calling upon the Force and sending the two one command: '_awaken._'

When Merrin opened her eyes, she was struck by an incredibly strong source of light first thing. She rubbed her eyes, momentarily blinded by it, before she was able to get a better look. The bright light came from the twin suns rising behind the man she had just restored to the living realm. It matched what she felt from him: such strong _light._ Despite being someone who had been living in agony until now, this man had so much light within him still.

"Are you okay?" he asked in a deep timbre that was, ironically, gentle. He offered two hands out to grab. It took a second before she registered that one was also for Cal, also awake and similarly transfixed with this man.

"Yes," she nodded. She and Cal both accepted the offer and the man pulled them both to their feet with ease. That was when she noticed just how _large_ the man was: he was _huge,_ built like a Nightbrother. It juxtaposed immensely with the gentleness the man showed them.

"Thanks for the help. But who are you people?" he asked.

"I'm Cal Kestis," Cal introduced himself. He then gestured to Merrin. "This is Merrin." He took a moment to really look at this man Merrin had resurrected. There was something about him that reminded him somewhat of Master Tapal. That feeling of a gentle giant. It was mostly because of his Master that Cal was not intimidated by those bigger than him. Here was no exception. "What's your name?"

'_What's your name?_' That question plagued Ben. He wasn't sure he knew. He didn't know whether to say Ben Solo or Kylo Ren. Where did he draw the line? Were they two different people like Rey seemed to believe? Or were they one and the same?

Regardless of whether or not they were one and the same, one thing he _did_ know, was that as soon as he heard his Dyad say she wanted to take Ben's hand, he knew who he _wanted_ to be.

"My name is Ben Solo," he replied. For the first time in years, he actually felt good about saying his true name.

He took a moment to inspect the two elders before him. Judging by their statures, he had the feeling they both were quite adventurous, especially Cal. Neither of them looked like they had settled down. He had seen the same look in his father when he was on that bridge in Starkiller.

Conversely, as he noticed how their hands seemed to naturally drift towards one another's, Ben could see a sense of content between them that he had never seen in his father, nor his mother. Even after living long lives, it seemed Cal and Merrin were both happy and had no regrets. Ben certainly could not say the same for his own parents.

He noticed much more than that, though. He took notice of the lightsaber hilt at Cal's side. It was interesting, Ben had to admit. Just from its construction it looked like it was two lightsabers put together to make one bigger weapon. "You're a Jedi, aren't you?"

Cal had anticipated that question. He took his lightsaber – made using parts from both Master Tapal's lightsaber as well as Cere's – and lit up both ends in answer. The two violet blades pierced the air with a sound that Ben would best describe as controlled chaos. It was quite a punch when the blades ignited. The sound they gave off radiated the power of the weapon, yet there was still control. A combination that fit in between the light and the dark.

When he took a closer look at Cal's Force signature, he realized that it was much the same. Though he was a Jedi, he also kind of liked to fight, and had no problem with killing, unlike most other Jedi he had heard of.

Cal soon retracted the blades and reset the hilt on his hip. He was curious, though, how Ben almost instantly knew. "You know about the Jedi?"

"I _was_ one," Ben replied. Then shame befell his face. "Until I wasn't."

Cal sensed that he didn't want to talk about it right now, so he didn't prod further.

Ben then looked towards Merrin with something almost like awe. "You must be a Nightsister."

Merrin tilted her head sardonically and let her magick flare from her hand demonstratively, yet also threateningly. "Perhaps."

Ben seemed to realize he was a bit forward with her. "I'm sorry, I…" he fumbled around awkwardly for what to say. "I didn't mean offense, it's just… I've only ever heard tales about the Nightsisters and how different they were from other Force-users. I'm just fascinated, is all. I like to study all about the Force and all the different ways it can be used. And the magick – the Nightsisters' magick – what little I've heard about it sounds extremely interesting. Just the ability to teleport alone sounds amazing."

Merrin opened her mouth in surprise. She did not expect that. The last time someone showed interest in her and her magick was Cal, and before that, Malicos. Just off his appearance, she had expected Ben to desire her magick for power like Malicos had. But she was surprised to find out he was just genuinely curious and had an appetite for learning. She never expected such a hulking figure to be such a scholar.

"I believe that is yours," she somewhat clumsily jerked her head dumbfounded in the direction of the lightsaber in the sand. Ben had thrown her for such a loop that she didn't know how to respond. She had been socially awkward for a really long time, and though she was much better now, this time was one where that trait shined.

"Oh," Ben mumbled as he looked over where she had gestured.

He stuck his hand out, calling upon the Force and pulled the blade into his palm. In his massive hand, the hilt felt quite small. It made sense though, considering it was never made for him.

"It's not actually mine," he corrected absently as he thought about the lightsaber.

"It's hers," Cal's voice ripped his attention. He had this not-understanding yet understanding look at the same time. "The girl's."

A pang went through Ben's heart at the mention of Rey. He wasn't under disbelief that Rey had done what she did, but it still hurt all the same. He always thought Rey was so strong, maybe strong enough to resist the call. But even still, he knew the darkness was just lurking under the surface, and only required a little push to bring it out of her. She was like a ticking detonator: it was only a matter of time before she gave in.

"Not exactly," Ben muttered in return, rotating the lightsaber in his hand as he observed it. "I think it calls to someone else."

"Who?" Cal inquired.

"I don't know. All I know is the Force implored her to make it. She may have made it, but it never really called to her. Not like the first one she made." At Cal's inquisitive look, he spilled. "Hinged double-blade. Red. Cracked crystals. I remember she was so terrified of it that she locked it away in a box. Much like she did with the darkness in her. She always hid it away in the back of her mind."

The older Jedi remained silent for a moment digesting what he said. He nodded, understanding why the girl he saw was so vicious. She was practically destined for darkness. "I saw what happened. What she did."

Ben's focus swung around on Cal again at his words. "Wait, you _saw_ what happened?" he questioned in disbelief.

In answer, Cal waved his right hand demonstratively. "Psychometry," he replied. "I saw it through an echo in the Force."

"Wow, you have that?" Ben was amazed at the fountain of knowledge these two turned out to be. "I heard it was a super rare ability, one that can't be learned."

"You'd be right. I was born with it." As great as it was to talk with someone familiar with the Jedi, Cal had to turn the conversation back on track. "I heard you, too, trying to get her to stop. I'm so sorry."

Ben looked down at the saber in his hand contemplatively. "It's fine. It was only a matter of time. She was always hot-tempered. The only reason she was on the Light Side for this long was because I was on the Dark Side. I was in the place that by all rights was meant to be hers."

Cal instantly grew a more wary look, but Merrin wasn't bothered. Rather, she was interested.

Ben looked up and noticed their looks, and figured he had to let the hypothetical tooka out of the bag. "For the last seven years, I was Kylo Ren."

He expected to be immediately cut down. He was under no impression that they hadn't at least heard of Kylo Ren, the Jedi Killer and Supreme Leader of the First Order. Surely he was a dead man now.

But it came as a shock to him when no such thing happened.

"Well you don't look like him anymore," Merrin observed, rather bluntly at that.

Cal quickly picked up on what she meant and nodded his agreement. Ben really reminded him of when he first met Merrin. She was his enemy at first, but then he realized she had a complicated past and his perception of her changed. He could see Ben was quite similar.

Ben picked apart her statement and ultimately got to what she really said: he wasn't Kylo Ren anymore, for better or worse. "I guess I don't," he muttered as he touched his face, the place his scar used to be.

"No, you don't," a new voice imbibed with youth yet wisdom echoed, making Ben quickly whirl around.

Three Force ghosts stood, backed by the light of the twin suns, all of which Ben recognized instantly.

Because they were all his family.

Anakin Skywalker, with Luke to his left and Leia to his right. His grandfather was always the most fascinating of the Jedi to Ben. He was always able to relate to his grandfather, even more so after finding out he was also Darth Vader. Both were fallen Jedi. Both had done the bidding of Palpatine, of the Dark Side. And both turned away from it in the end. And, if his young appearance was to be believed, both of them died young.

Of course, Ben knew that wasn't true as Anakin had lived on as Vader for another twenty-four years after the light in him died. But even then, he still recognized the overwhelming similarities they shared.

"Ben," Anakin continued, leaving his children's side to approach Ben, warm and inviting. "You brave, brave man."

Ben was unsure how to feel. One part of him felt humbled by his grandfather's praise, yet another wondered why he even bothered to praise him. He didn't feel like he was worthy of praise. "Why do you say that, grandfather?"

"Because you did what I could not." One of Anakin's hands came to rest on his shoulder. It felt warm, so unlike the cold he felt whenever he talked to Vader's helmet. "When faced with losing the woman you love, you didn't lose yourself. Furthermore, you _saved_ her from death… something I failed to do with your grandmother."

He heard the regret in his voice at the end. His grandmother Padmé was never really talked about by his family. They never really knew her beyond what was fact. Hence, to hear about her at all had his attention. But hearing the shame in Anakin's voice as he talked about her revealed a lot that he didn't know. Even with just that little bit, he could already feel the pure love his grandfather felt for her. It was comparable to what he felt for Rey.

But Ben still didn't really understand why he was being praised. Why? He was nothing. He was insignificant. What did he do to earn such praise?

Anakin saw, and smiled sideways as he took a step back. "You're stronger than you give yourself credit for. Certainly stronger than me."

"How?" Ben asked, incapable of understanding. "You defeated the Emperor. I couldn't. I was too weak."

"If it wasn't for you, Ben," Luke spoke up, "there would've been no stopping him. But you used the greatest power there is, and it defeated him."

"What power is that, uncle?" Ben asked doubtfully.

"Love," his uncle wisely replied. "Your love for Rey is what allowed her to stand up and defeat the Emperor. Without that, she would've fallen and become just like him."

Oh, the irony of those words. Ben was not egoistic, but he wasn't so humble as to not realize the role his disappearance played in Rey's fall. Without him there, her darkness had nothing to keep it in check.

"And that's exactly what happened," Ben apathetically said. "She _has_ fallen."

Anakin and Luke were both thrown off a bit by Ben's callous outlook. "Yes, but _you_ have returned to bring her back," Anakin countered optimistically.

Ben shook his head defeated. "You don't get it. I _tried_ to stop her, but she wouldn't listen. I can feel how swamped she is in the Dark Side. She can't even feel me anymore. Otherwise she wouldn't have murdered Uncle Lando just to give herself power."

His voice broke at that. His Uncle Lando was gone, at the hand of the woman he loved. The Rey of light he knew was totally gone, and in her place was a Rey of darkness.

"Do you still think she will listen to me now?" He turned his back on his three Force-user family members. "It's hopeless to try and confront her."

As he walked off towards the homestead, Cal and Merrin stood off to the side. They both understood they had no place in this family affair, but by the Force they had quite the experience just observing. Even witnessing just one interaction they could tell this family was very interesting. Cal in particular found it interesting, as he recognized Anakin from the Clone Wars. He never knew the greatest of the Jedi Knights had a family. It did make him feel less like he had betrayed the Jedi Code, though, since he had also started a family.

Anakin, however, was annoyed at his grandson's apathy. He looked to his right, to his daughter, silently begging for her permission.

Leia sighed, already knowing what he was going to do. "Go ahead, father."

Anakin grabbed Ben with the Force and yanked him back against his will. Ben yelped in surprise before hitting the ground again. When he tried to get up, Anakin froze him on his knees.

"Do not walk away from your mother like that," he lowly scolded. Though his voice remained the same, his manner of speech shifted to that more threatening yet eloquent speech pattern he had developed as Vader.

Cal noticed Anakin's change of speech. It sounded different than he remembered, but at the same time, there was something about it that was so familiar as well. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was, though.

Ben wanted to spit at his grandfather but at the same time his mother came forward. Then, all words left him.

How long had it been since he last saw his mother? He couldn't say exactly, but the difference between what he remembered and what stood before him now was great. His mother seemed so much frailer now, like her source of strength had left her. When he had last been with her, she just seemed to be this unstoppable force that could do anything.

Now, he had a good idea why she had changed so much: because he left. At first, he believed it was just weakness on her part, but now, he understood it was because _he_ was her source of strength, and without him, she wasn't the same.

"Mom," he mumbled, a sob ready to rip loose.

"Ben." Her voice was just as warm and comforting as he remembered it was years ago. It caused a few tears to leak out of his eyes.

"I… Mom, I… I'm sorry…"

Leia ran her hands through her son's hair, gently pulling him into an embrace. It was the only way she could hug him in a way in which neither had to strain themselves, as he was just too tall and she too short.

"My son," she whispered as her hands soothingly ran through his dark locks. "I already forgave you."

Ben's arms came up around her to return the embrace. All the emotions he had withheld all these years came tumbling out, and he buried his face into her stomach, just letting it all out. It didn't even register with him that Anakin had released the freeze he had on him. He just wanted the warmth of his mother.

"If anything, _I'm_ the one who's sorry for never being there for you, and for sending you away." Leia bent down to plant a soft kiss on his forehead. Ben could feel the warmth coming from it ."I should've listened to what you wanted. I shouldn't have let my fears take control of me."

"I acted on my fears, too," Luke said. Ben let his mother go, and she took a step back. "And I paid for it dearly. I made the biggest mistake of my life when I lit my lightsaber that night. I can only hope you can forgive me, Ben."

Ben could hear the regret in his uncle's voice. He was angry with him before, but now, seeing with clarity again, he only had one question. "Why did you? What made you so afraid?"

"There's one thing that scared me more than anything, Ben. That was the Emperor. The time I was with him, I was so certain I was going to die. There was nothing I could do to save myself, and that, Ben, was what made him so frightening. So when I saw Snoke in your head, I was stunned by just how much he felt like the Emperor."

Ben wasn't sure if Luke knew the truth that Snoke was a servant of Palpatine, but with hindsight and Luke's explanation, he could now understand why he reacted the way he did. Seeing something that was so reminiscent of his greatest fear must've messed him up a lot.

"… And because of that, I acted rashly." The remorse Luke showed made Ben feel a little bad about being so angry at him. Even though he had a right to be, he now realized Luke must've hated himself more.

"We've all made our mistakes, Ben," his grandfather re-entered, speaking like Anakin again. "Me most of all. And _I'm_ so sorry for what I unfairly put on you. My actions have put a stain on our whole family. My mistakes should _never_ have been put on your shoulders. Everything that happened to you was because of my own legacy, a legacy you should've never had to bear."

Anakin then reached out with his hand. Out of the sand came flying two lightsabers. He recognized them both as one landed in Anakin's palm. The other, which his grandfather levitated for Leia to take, was his mother's lightsaber. He rarely saw her with it, but it was one reason she seemed so unstoppable.

In his grandfather's hand, was _the_ saber. The lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker, passed down from generation to generation. The lightsaber he once foolishly claimed belonged to him on Starkiller.

And his grandfather extended it out to him in offering.

"Take it," he insisted. "Take it and do what you believe is right. That's what I thought of when I built it. And that's the legacy I want for whoever wields it." The look in his grandfather's eye was so understanding, something Ben had come to find was a common occurrence between them. "I know you, Ben. You've always wanted to do what you believed was right. Take this, and do it." Then, as if he had read his grandson's mind, "You _are_ worthy."

Ben slowly stood back up. After an internal debate on whether or not he should, he hesitantly accepted the weapon he had believed himself unworthy of. Even though he had wielded it previously on Exegol when he came to save Rey, it was still surreal to him that he was holding it. When it refused to come to him on Starkiller, he felt so unworthy and incapable. But now, he felt so much more in-tune with it. He still held doubts, and he wasn't even sure he even _wanted_ to face Rey as she was now. But he didn't feel as hopeless as he did before.

Leia huffed. "You stole my idea," she pouted at her father.

Anakin shot a boyish smirk at her. "Let's just say that part of you came from me."

"Liar. We all know it came from mother."

Anakin chuckled as he stepped aside for Leia to approach her son.

"Take it," she passed her lightsaber to him. He took it. "As a reminder that I'm always with you, Ben. And don't feel like you have to do anything you don't want to do."

Ben felt confused. The way he saw it, his mother was advising him to do the opposite of what his grandfather advised him. "What do _you_ want me to do?" he asked, partly because he wanted to please her, and partly because he was curious about what she wanted for him.

She smiled at him warmly and let her hand drift to his face, her motherly touch tracing its features. "Go home," she simply said.

Ben blinked. He didn't expect such a simple desire. "Home?" he repeated, baffled.

She nodded. "Go home."

After thinking about what she could possibly mean, it clicked. But he hesitated. He wasn't sure he should. It had been so long since he'd been home. It had been decades.

Anakin caught his hesitation. "You would be wise to surrender to your mother's wishes," he intervened, a warning undertone in his voice.

'_You would be wise to surrender._' Cal's eyes shot open in haunting realization. He had heard those words before, a long time ago, from a man in a suit. From Darth Vader.

"It was you."

Everyone turned to Cal as soon as he spoke.

"_You_ were the man in the suit."

Anakin realized he was the one being referred to. "Do I know you?" he questioned with a touch of concern.

"The Fortress, fifty years ago." The hate in his voice was prevalent. Cal stepped forward, pulling his lightsaber and igniting the two purple blades. "The day you killed the Second Sister – _Trilla Suduri_ – for failing you. The only reason _I'm_ still alive after facing you is because _she,_" he nodded back to Merrin, "pulled me out of the water."

Nobody interfered, the Skywalkers because they knew their main patriarch would not raise a hand against a stranger now, and Merrin because she was still somewhat in a suspended state of shock. She had no idea what was happening. But at the same time, she trusted Cal.

The recognition soon dawned in Anakin's eyes. It had been a long time indeed since that day. No longer was Cal the same red-headed teenager who dared to face him even when it was obvious he would not win. But the moment he lit up two purple blades he recognized him. He felt shame for being reminded of that time of his life.

"Why did you do it?" Cal interrogated. The harshness in his voice grew. "Why did you betray the Jedi – betray _us_ – and kill us all?! Why did you torture us into madness and make us into your puppets?! WHY?!"

Anakin lowered his head in shame of all those heinous acts he had committed. He now remembered the Second Sister – _Trilla Suduri,_ he corrected himself; she deserved to be remembered for her true self – with clarity. He remembered how his overwhelming darkness had utterly terrified her. She was quaking in her boots when he stalked up behind her. She was like a little girl scared of the monster under the bed. In that case, the monster was him.

"I thought I was doing what I had to do to save my wife," he explained regretfully. "But after that, there is no excuse. I just did not care anymore after she died. I lost myself completely and did terrible, terrible things." He ruefully looked into Cal's angry eyes. "And I know there is _nothing_ I can do to make that right. For that, I'm so sorry."

Cal didn't know what to do. He was still angry, but he just couldn't bring himself to take action. Something held him back. Maybe it was the genuine remorse he saw in him.

"I beg of you, do not put your anger on Ben. He doesn't deserve it. Hate me all you want. But don't judge him for _my_ actions."

Cal wanted to hold onto his anger at Anakin – he rightfully deserved it – but he understood the point he was making. He came here to help Ben. He should not be angry at him for something his grandfather did a long time ago. He could not change the past. He had to move on.

With a last angry huff out of his nose, Cal sheathed his lightsaber and turned around, walking away. "I'll get the ship," he muttered to Merrin as he passed her, headed for the speeder they arrived in.

BD-1 looked between his two masters. Merrin tilted her head in Cal's direction, silently commanding the droid to go with him. He obliged, though the normal joy he displayed at going with Cal was tampered down with the weight of what they just uncovered.

As Cal and BD-1 sped off, Anakin looked to Ben. "I brought a change of clothes here just before the Clone Wars started." He passed a look over his grandson's attire, most notably the hole in his shirt. "You look like you could use it."

Ben looked at his grandfather oddly – the suggestion was a little out of the blue – but went into the homestead anyways.

Anakin looked to Merrin apologetically. "Sorry for…" He awkwardly gestured towards where Cal had walked away. "… all that."

The Nightsister held up a hand, stopping him. "Apology accepted. We cannot change the past."

Anakin nodded in understanding. He knew that lesson better than anyone.

"Leia, what are you up to with Ben?" he heard Luke ask his sister. "Why are you sending him there?"

He turned upon word of their little disagreement. It reminded Anakin of a point he wanted to make. "Yeah, Leia. Why are you advising him to do the opposite of what we _need_ him to do? I don't know if you realized, but the galaxy is on the verge of another dark age."

"Luke, Father," Leia interrupted them with a steely undertone. Her eyes held theirs resolutely. "_Trust me._"

Luke nodded his acceptance. He trusted Leia more than he trusted anyone else.

Anakin, however, took longer to come around. When he did, he shot her a warning look. "This better work."

"It will," Leia's voice suggested no betrayal of confidence. She was sure her plan would work. "No one is ever really gone. You both taught me that."

When Ben came back, it was with a bag over his shoulder. He found it and placed everything he had in it, including the change of clothes and the three lightsabers he now had.

Over the horizon, everyone could see as Cal returned with the S-161 _Stinger_ XL he and Merrin now owned, christened as the _Mantis._ As he came in to land the ship, Cal didn't bother shutting down the engines as he was under the impression they would take off immediately. Hence, behind the ship, the three engines kicked up a cloud of sand.

"Ben! One last thing before you go!" Anakin had to shout to be heard over the roar of the engines.

Grandson turned to face grandfather. Anakin took a short moment to revel in how much he had grown, even from a short while ago. Ben truly was everything Anakin had tried to be, and it made him so proud.

"When you get your head straight," Anakin pointed to his head as he said that, "there's someone who wants to talk to you!"

Ben's eyebrows furrowed. "Who?!" he shouted back.

Anakin grinned. "You'll like her! She's like a sister to me!"

Ben had done plenty of research on his grandfather, so he knew who he was talking about. There was only one person who fit that description of being like a sister to him.

"And remember, Ben: you're stronger than you give yourself credit for!"

To hear that praise _again…_ He still didn't quite know how to take it, but he didn't reject it outright.

"_Ekh! Davay!_" he heard Merrin yell at him from the top of the ship's ramp, gesturing to him to come on. He did study Dathomirian, so he understood her, but it did take a minute to process since this was pretty much the first time he actually heard it spoken. Considering she reverted to her native tongue, though, he thought maybe she was getting a bit impatient.

With a final nod of acknowledgment to Anakin, he prepared to head up the ramp.

"Ben!" his mother's voice stopped him at the top of the ramp. "Remember: no one is ever really gone!"

The dual layers of that statement were immediately recognized by Ben. She meant himself as well as Rey. If _he_ was never truly lost to the darkness, then that also meant Rey was still there somewhere under all that darkness. He still had his doubts about that, but his mother did inspire a little bit of hope in him. She was pretty good at that.

He smiled, truly smiled at her, and gave a final nod to his mother, memorizing the warmth in her eyes and just how bright she was in the light.

He then entered the ship. The ramp pulled up and the door shut. Then, the ship kicked up a dust storm as it lifted off the ground, landing gear pulling up and the mechanical transformation of its outboard engine and stabilizer into the flight position, and then took off into the light of the suns.

Anakin had his arms around both his children's shoulders as they serenely watched their last remaining family head off into the light once more. With that, their work was done. Together, they faded back into the Force.

XXXXXXXXXX

"So, where are we going?" Cal asked Ben as he piloted the ship out of Tatooine's atmosphere. Merrin, now having taken off her cloak, let her hand trail over his shoulder lovingly as she sat down in the copilot's seat.

Ben was at the holotable just behind the cockpit. He was searching for his destination with it. BD-1 was perched on the table edge, his favorite spot. He was also curious about the newcomer Ben. Where would he take them?

Finally, Ben found the planet he was looking for, and selected it. "Home," he replied simply to Cal's inquiry.

Cal looked at the screens, and something familiar niggled his brain when he saw the destination Ben had selected. "Huh, I think I've heard of there before."

With that, he reached up and pushed the hyperdrive lever forward. In a blur of stars, they all shot away into hyperspace.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**Good God, was this chapter hard on me! Anyways, we have Ben finally say something other than "Ow," he and the Mantis crew meet, we have a heartfelt Skywalker family reunion, a revelation that brings back unpleasant memories for Cal, and Ben setting out and leaving Tatooine with the Mantis crew. Their destination, though, remains a mystery.**_

_**Unless, of course, you know everything about Ben. Then you should be able to figure out where they're heading.**_

_**This took a while because I really wanted to get Ben perfect. And that's hard to do considering he's already perfect. But, yeah. I wanted to get all the interactions right, too, because there was a LOT to unpack here.**_

_**I called back a lot to Jedi: Fallen Order here, and with that, I had to give an honorable mention to Trilla Suduri – the Second Sister – my favorite character in the game. I don't know, I guess I just really like those types of dark, complex characters. And Trilla checked off an extra box for me by being a dark female character. I just have a thing for dark female characters. It's why I love the Dark Rey stuff.**_

_**Now, about Cal's lightsaber. I just never customized it besides selecting the purple blade. It's because I found the saber and how it's modified over the course of the game to tell a story all in itself, and I found such a beauty in it that I didn't want to change it. I chose purple for the reasons outlined in the story. He's a Jedi that kind of likes the thrill of a fight, so I thought that put him in the middle somewhere between light and dark. To me, purple represents that in-between status.**_

_**Anyways, if you enjoyed, then follow and fave and feel free to tell me why in a review! And a small question to end with for those who have seen The Clone Wars as well as the prequels: When you read Anakin in a story, do you hear Matt Lanter or Hayden Christensen? For me, it depends on the time frame. Within the Clone Wars, I hear Matt. But before or after, I hear Hayden.**_


	8. Chapter 8

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Eight**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

"Welcome back, you two!"

Ana and Nat heard the welcoming just before being swept up into a huge embrace by Hera Syndulla. Her age may have showed in other ways, but not through her hugs. No, those were still suffocating. In a good way, though. It was an embrace the two Nightsisters gladly reciprocated.

After parting, the elderly Twi'lek began throwing questions at them. "How are you? How are your parents? It's been forever since I saw them!"

"We're fine, Hera," Ana smiled, a sense of contentment washing over her. It was great to be back amongst the family Mika had given to her. It was always fun to be around them. Though different from her family growing up, she didn't at all mind it.

She noticed a blur of red hair dart towards a mop of green hair. At the sight of them smashing their faces together, Ana had to roll her eyes. Nat didn't care for propriety at all. If she wanted to make out with Jacen right then, then she would, even in front of her mother-in-law. Ana was the opposite; she preferred to keep her love life in the shadows. She found it more romantic that way.

Turning back to Hera, she replied, "Mother and father chose to stay on Dathomir, but they're doing great."

Mika's attention was perked from where he stood out of the way when he heard Ana say Dathomir. He smiled slightly upon hearing it. Saying the name of her birth world was one of the few times she spoke with an accent, the other times being when she chanted incantations. He loved hearing that Dathomirian enunciation. She sounded so attractive when she talked like that.

He smiled much more humorously when C1-10P, or Chopper for short, came barreling into the room and zoomed past Nat and Jacen, forcing them to jump apart to evade him. Mika hid his chuckles.

"_Chyort!_" Nat cursed in Dathomirian. Though she knew curses in Basic, she usually used Dathomirian curses because, out of her parents, her mother was the one who she saw curse the most. Her father didn't really use such language ever. Hence, her mother was who she learned to curse from, so she adopted what she heard from her.

"Dammit Chopper, you bucket of bolts!" Jacen cursed, his face flustered red.

The obsolete astromech spouted a very rude and crude warning to not do 'the nasty' in public view, even going so far as to use his manipulators to demonstrate said act before wheeling away back to where he came from. But not before Ana burst into guffaws. She saw it as karma for Nat being so indecent in public.

"Well, he's one thing I didn't miss about home," Nat grumbled. She wasn't truly upset, having learned fairly early on that that's just how Chopper was.

"You know… he's right, sister!" Ana managed to get out in between laughs.

"Oh, shut it!" she retorted, an embarrassed fluster rising through her face.

"And so it begins again," Hera muttered, rolling her eyes with a wry grin at the circus affair that was her son and nephew, and their Nightsister wives.

The former Rebellion pilot headed after the astromech to perhaps give him another stern talking-to, one he wouldn't listen to regardless. But she loved her droid no matter all the crap he pulled.

As she left, Nat and Jacen wised up and decided to continue their extended reunion elsewhere in private.

Hence, Ana was left alone with Mika in the living room. All alone, with nothing to interfere.

He was dressed more casually now compared to his senator's garb, though she thought he looked equally handsome no matter whether he was dressed to the nines or he just rolled out of bed. And then there was his glorious dark brown hair. It wasn't the most glamorous she had seen – her mother-in-law had once shown her an old holocron of Anakin Skywalker; _that_ was truly glorious hair – but it was still enough to make her want to run her fingers through it.

But what caught her the most were those bright blue eyes. There was so much wisdom behind them. Even though she was several years older than him, he was ironically the more mature one between them. He was such a charmer, too, without even trying. Enough of one to make her feel like a little girl crushing hard.

"Hey," he said in a very low voice – only one note away from a whisper – as he approached her. Though he didn't have a Core accent, he spoke the same refined vocabulary as those from the Core. And it made her knees weak.

"Hey," she breathed when he was only a hair's breadth in front of her. That smile of his made her heart flutter with desire.

Since they were alone now, she gave into it, and let her lips softly kiss his. That electric thrill that shot through her whenever they kissed was still there in full. She felt his hands run down her back and rest at the small. Getting a little braver, she brought her arms around his neck and darted her tongue into his mouth, caressing his Togruta fangs with it. It prickled a bit whenever she did that, but one thing mother taught her when teaching her to use her magick was to use pain to fuel herself. The pain didn't drive her away, but rather, she grew more invigorated by that little sting.

At last, though, they parted, but they did not leave each other's embrace. "How's Trilla?"

Mika had a warm feeling at the concern she had for their daughter and replied, "Her cousins dragged her off to their rooms to do who knows what earlier today." He then shook his head fondly. "AP reckons those three girls will be the death of her." He referred to AP-5, Hera's protocol droid, who had a very sardonic and sarcastic personality, along with a very distinct drawling Core accent.

"She'll make it. She's strong." The 'just like her namesake' was left unsaid.

Perhaps unlike her younger sister, Ana was always fascinated by the tales her parents and Auntie Cere and Uncle Greez told. The one she was most interested in was the story of Trilla Suduri, Cere's former Padawan. It was sad, hearing how Cere's mistakes resulted in her being tortured until she broke and became an Inquisitor, one of the best at that. Ana always took away from that to mean Trilla was very accomplished and had many great skills and was a strong woman, but that greatness was unfortunately used in the wrong way. And she didn't even have a choice in it. Still, from what she had heard about her from Cere, during her Jedi days Trilla was very smart, and considered one of the best Padawans of her generation. High praise, considering her generation also had Ahsoka Tano in it. Hence, she felt honored to name her little girl after such an accomplished woman.

"What are you doing here?" she asked him with a little smile. She didn't complain about the private moment between them.

Her husband let one arm fall away from her waist as he turned to face the corner, which had a side table holding the Syndulla family's Kalikori. It was an heirloom, a prized one, within Twi'lek families. Every member of it would add their own contribution to its branches, leaving behind a legacy for every generation of the family.

Of course, it was much larger now than it was before the Galactic Civil War, so Hera had said. Over the years, she had added two more branches, bringing it to four in total. The reason behind that was to allow her entire family the chance to add to it. What she defined as her 'entire' family, though, was very large. Of course, there was her father, mother, her ancestors, and herself who had added to it first. But then she added her fallen lover and the father of her child Kanan Jarrus to it, and through that, she eventually drudged up the idea to add the entire _Ghost_ crew to it. They were her family in every way that mattered. And then when she discovered Ahsoka again – with her own little family in Lux and their son Mika – she decided to add them as well. Ahsoka was much like an older sister to her.

Mika let his eyes run over the various other additions made to it over the years after Kanan's. He started with the first newly added branch.

He saw the pointed tip of a Lasat Honor Guard staff. Garazeb Orrelios, or Zeb, as he liked to be called.

There was _another_ small piece of a Lasat Honor Guard's weapon, this one from a blaster. Alexandr Kallus, the next Fulcrum after his mother. He felt it appropriate considering Zeb and Kallus were as close as brothers.

There were two little trinket-sized helmets, like those found on a keychain, one a scout trooper's helmet and the other a female Mandalorian helmet, both painted with incredible creativity. Both helmets were chained together and hung side by side, appropriately representing how together the two owners of them were. Ezra Bridger and Sabine Wren.

Then, on the other added branch was where his family began.

The first one was a piece from some kind of wrist-worn device. He recognized it as being from an old Clone Wars era holotrace device. It was something Lux Bonteri kept in memoriam of being rescued from his own stupidity by Ahsoka. Carlac was not his best moment. Though, Mika recalled that was the place they had their first kiss. After he got past the phase of 'kissing is gross,' he thought the exact circumstances of that kiss were hilarious.

Rigidly attached to the bottom of that, though, was Ahsoka Tano's contribution. It was one of the teeth from her old headdress she wore as a Padawan, something she would most likely have worn upon first meeting Lux. And again something she had worn when they shared that very unconventional first kiss. Mika thought it suited her well. Though she was gentle for the most part, Ahsoka could become a savage huntress if provoked, like if her family was in danger.

"Just thinking how all but one of the people who put a piece on this are now dead," Mika finally said. Ana took note of the sadness in his eyes. "Jacen's father died before he was even born. The rest of Aunt Hera's family is long gone. Ezra and Sabine were killed on Mandalore, before they could ever have their own family. Zeb and Kallus were killed during the First Order's conquest. And then my parents…"

Ana saw how the death of his parents affected him so strongly. She ran one of her hands through his hair soothingly.

"Father died when the Hosnian system was wiped out. And then, during the war, I felt mother's presence just vanish one day… She was gone, too."

Ana brought her hand to brush away the tears from his cheek. When Mika looked up at her, there was so much sympathy in her gaze that he couldn't bear to hold it.

"I can't say I have experience in dealing with dead parents, but I know Lux and Ahsoka. And you do, too." There was an honesty in her voice that wasn't feigned at all. She truly believed in her words, something that made him listen. "They would be proud of you, Mika. When you found out they were gone, you immediately did what you could to realize their dreams, even putting your own to the side if necessary. When he died, you took your father's place as senator of Onderon and used the training your mother gave you to defend your home when she couldn't. You're their warrior prince." Her hand remained on his cheek; a warm anchor, surprisingly light from a Sister of the Night. "If Trilla did even half that, we'd both be proud of her. It's no different for you and your parents."

The darkness in his bright blue eyes lightened, though from what she could tell, something still bothered him. "I was there when father and mother liberated Onderon from the Empire. I was only a toddler, mind you, but I remember how driven they were. And when I asked them about it years later, they told me _I_ was their drive. They had fought so hard so I could have a better life. I feel like I owe it to them to uphold that. But I just have this terrible feeling that it'll all be for nothing and that more of us will die." Before she could say otherwise, he cut her off. "I'm not being morose just for misery's sake."

That got her attention if he had a real reason. Both her red eyebrows raised, waiting for him to elaborate.

"There's something about that girl who's leading the Resistance now. Rey. She hides her signature well, and that's what unnerves me the most about her. I can't tell anything about her. It makes her feel dangerous."

He bit the corner of his lip with one of his fangs, only to have Ana grab his chin in chastisement. It was a habit he had whenever he was on edge, one he did subconsciously and which she couldn't stand. Realizing he did it again, he had a moment of shame before recomposing himself.

"Jacen told me I'm just drawing conclusions too soon. And I know mother would tell me the same thing. What do you think?"

Ana paused. If this concerned him this much to have him nearly unravel just thinking about it, then it must be serious. "Mother always taught Nat and I to never trust an outsider unless they earn it." A hint of amusement entered her eyes. "I remember you have experience with that."

He did. He remembered how terrified he was of her and her family at first. They didn't trust him at all. But with persistence, he eventually earned their trust, and her love.

"I think Jacen's right, in a way. You should give her a chance." He saw her green eyes harden into emeralds. _That_ look always terrified him, even now when that look only meant he was banished to the couch. "_One_ chance. If she wastes that chance, then don't feel inclined to be nice to her."

Mika nodded. He felt better now. His wife had great instincts. He trusted them. Trusted her.

They stood together for another moment, embracing the quiet. It gave them time to reflect and think about what was next.

Until the chaotic symphony of the rest of the family reached their ears. They could hear Chopper's mocking laughter…

"No, don't you _dare_ put that in my hair!"

…Trilla and her cousins arguing…

"Girls, stop it and come help me with the food!"

… and Hera trying to restore order.

Mika grinned fondly at it all. He loved this family. He wouldn't trade it for any other in the world. "We should probably see what all the ruckus is about."

Ana nodded, a quiet smile on her face as well.

XXXXXXXXXX

The sun was setting over Coruscant. Darkness encroached the planet, in more ways than one.

In that outside darkness, the main inner circle of Rey's new order – Finn, Zorii, Rose, Poe, Kaydel, Jannah, Beaumont, and Chewie, 3PO, and D-O, along with Rey herself – were gathered around R2, who projected a hologram of a section of Coruscant's upper levels. What made this section unique, however, was that it was the final resting place of the wreckage of a _Resurgent_-class Star Destroyer.

"They're using the ship's wreckage as their base. No one would dare attack that fortress, and it has plenty of supplies for them to sustain their fight," Poe briefed.

"And," Rose picked up immediately as she moved her hand over the hologram, highlighting pathways that branched out from the ship to known First Order holdout cells. "they have secure supply lines. It's why all these different cells have held out as long as they have."

"Furthermore, fighting on the front lines is chaos," Finn continued immediately after Rose. "It's street to street, house to house." He blanched at the reminder of the last time he fought on the front lines. "Getting to our objective was a chore and a half. There were times where our side had the first and third floors of a building secure but there were First Order troopers still holding the second floor."

Rose nudged him, a silent cue to continue with the actual briefing. He took notice, and got back on track.

"But there was something else we found after the skirmish, when Rose and I finally got on our scouting mission."

He nodded to R2, who took the cue and started up a new hologram. A recording.

"We captured this from our overwatch nest," Rose informed.

From that nest, they managed to get a clear view of part of the makeshift base the First Order had made out of the crashed Star Destroyer. Activity there was high. But one little detail everybody took notice of, now that they weren't under fire from them, was that, excluding the flametroopers who had them for practical reasons, the troopers weren't wearing helmets. Just their armor, and beaten up armor at that, showing that they'd fought heavily. For many, it was the first time they had ever seen unmasked stormtroopers, not counting Finn.

The focus shifted towards two troopers holding a conversation.

"_How's the extraction coming along?_" one of them asked. The shoulder pauldron revealed him to be a commander. Even over hologram, it was easy to see he had much experience in battle. His appearance was gritty, hardened by the war. The state of his armor showed it. It was scuffed, dented, and beaten. There were even pieces missing completely.

"_We've almost got the AT-ST out from the wreckage. Once it's out we'll have a massive firepower advantage against the Resistance. They have no units equipped to handle it,_" the other, a heavy trooper, notified, pride noticeable in her voice but with a twinge of anxiety accompanying it. Unlike her superior, she was much more fresh-faced. Practically a shiny, holding her standard-issue FWMB-10 repeating blaster - often called the Megablaster for short - with both hands as if she was under inspection. The only thing that stopped her from being a full-on shiny was her armor. It was in a state much like her superior's: beaten down and scuffed beyond recognition.

Rey crossed her arms as she took notice of how young the girl was. She was around the same age as herself, still very young. A girl stripped of her innocence too soon. Practically a child sent off to war. A pawn sent off to die.

They had much in common. Yet they were also very different. Rey wasn't a naïve, pathetic child anymore. She wasn't some pawn for the Resistance to send out anymore. She was at the top now, and she planned to stay there.

"_Just because it's powerful doesn't make it invincible,_" the commander cautioned with the wisdom of someone who had been there and done that. "_Especially here, of all places. Cities are deathtraps for armor. There are a million different places where the Resistance can hide and blast a rocket at it where it can't shoot back. We need to be careful how we use it._"

The younger girl nodded. Then, with an anxious hesitation, she timidly asked, "_Sir… do you think we'll make it out of this? I mean,_" she shrugged helplessly, like a massive weight had just been set on her shoulders, "_there's nobody coming to help us. Is there even a point in fighting back anymore?_"

The commander's hardened mug seemed to soften in sympathy at her despair. "_We fight to **survive.** Surrender just isn't an option. The Resistance will just shoot us on sight._" He laid a hand on her shoulder supportively. "_The only thing we can do is take it one day at a time. Survive until the next day, then the next after that._"

Her face grew reluctantly optimistic at her superior's words, and she nodded. Their chances may still be terrible, but thinking about it one day at a time made it easier to stomach.

R2 then cut the recording.

Most everyone watching felt some sympathy for the two troopers. Seeing them without their helmets humanized them in their eyes. It reminded them that there were real people underneath that armor.

Finn especially was affected. The reminder that stormtroopers were still real people hit him especially hard. It made him feel sick as he recalled all the times he blasted his former brothers and sisters without hesitation.

Rey, however, had only one question. "Why didn't you kill them?"

The disappointment in her voice made everyone stop in surprise. This was not what they expected her to say. Zorii in particular gaped in utter disbelief at her callousness.

"… I'm sorry?" Rose tried. She didn't understand Rey's displeasure.

"You had a clear shot on them," Rey explained to Finn and Rose like it was obvious. "_Why _didn't you_ kill _them?" She repeated her question with an underlying tone demanding they answer her.

Finn looked to Rose, who stood shocked by the implication in Rey's question, as he tried to find an answer. He couldn't just say that he didn't want to; he had a feeling Rey wouldn't accept his sympathizing with the enemy.

"We figured we could learn more information if they stayed alive," he finally mumbled his answer, avoiding eye contact with her. He figured such an analytical and distanced answer would be welcomed.

Rey gave him an appraising look. She was still disappointed Finn and Rose had allowed those stormtroopers to live, but if it got them more information to use against them then she could live with that.

She finally nodded, though her eyes remained slightly narrowed. Something felt off in Finn. "Very well, then. But no more of that."

Rose looked at Rey with her eyebrows furrowed. She couldn't understand why she was so cold now. Her actions were starting to conflict with the usual ways the Resistance operated. And Rose didn't like it.

For a moment, nobody spoke up. The silence was thick, almost enough to choke. Nobody seemed to have the desire to speak up. It was like they were afraid of what would happen if they did.

Finally, Poe worked up the courage. "So, what do we do now?" he asked. "What's our play?"

"Ease off on them, but remain engaged," Rey responded. Sensing their confusion with her plan, she felt an explanation was necessary. "They won't advance if they know what's good for them. If they do, then they'll overstretch their supply lines. If that happens, we'll just cut them off, then encircle that pocket and crush it." She made a fist to emphasize. "Either way, we still win. Just this way, we might have to wait a little longer for them to run out their willpower. But it's worth it if it allows us to avoid any unnecessary loss of life."

Finn nodded his head in agreement. It was a good plan. "Sounds good." With that, the group began to disperse.

"One last thing, though," Rey lifted her finger to stop them from disbanding. Underneath her black hood, she quirked her lips in an ironic smile. "That commander was right."

Finn and Poe looked to each other in question. Several such looks were shared between all of them.

Rey looked to each of them, making sure she had their full attention. "From now on, if any First Order soldiers surrender, then they are to be executed."

She felt a spike of anger in the Force. Looking towards it, she saw an outraged Zorii. A sly smirk grew on her lips, which she used to taunt her further.

The former bounty hunter decided enough was enough and stormed off. She couldn't handle dealing with that… that _bitch_ anymore.

Poe saw Zorii storm away. It concerned him. He moved to follow, but a cold hand on his shoulder stopped him.

Rey's piercing gaze served to warn him. "That is my order."

Those words stirred up conflict in Poe. He was never one for following orders for a long time, until the evacuation from D'Qar. After that, when they got to Crait, he came to realize the wisdom of following orders and trusting his superiors.

But that order seemed to upset Zorii quite a bit. And he had already upset her enough. He didn't want to do so anymore.

Rey pulled him along as she approached Finn. Finn felt her clamp a hand on his shoulder. He could feel the cold even through the fabric of his clothes.

"Finn, what would you feel if you lost Rose?" She then glanced to Poe. "What would you feel if you lost Zorii?"

Finn and Poe knew what they'd be like without them, but it was too terrible a possibility for them to put into words. They remained lost on what Rey was trying to say, however.

"I once lost someone like that. I can tell you it feels like losing half your soul." She swallowed thickly at the poignant reminder that Ben was gone from her life. The grief she still felt made her lose her composure a bit. "It is a punishment I wouldn't wish upon anybody."

Finn and Poe never knew that Rey had lost someone she loved that deeply, let alone that she had even been in love at all. With that loss, though, she was suffering every day now. Why didn't she tell them? About being in love in the first place as well as how much she had to be suffering now?

"If we give our enemies the chance, then they will take away all that we love." Her sickly, pale features then hardened into determined rage. "I will _not_ let that happen. Not again."

Out of nowhere, she angrily shoved the both of them away. Finn nearly stumbled to the ground, but Rose caught and steadied him.

Poe had no such person to catch him, and he fell to the ground. He returned to his feet in a not so graceful manner.

"Dismissed!" Rey harshly announced. She then remembered something, and pointed at Beaumont. "Except you. You had an update for me."

Everyone except for Beaumont and Chewie left, Beaumont because of the update he had for Rey and Chewie because Rey had immediately sought out the Wookie for a deep hug. It was one she needed after talking about Ben again. She couldn't talk about him without becoming upset.

Poe immediately ran off after Zorii, and Rose and Finn departed together, but not before the Haysian took a moment to look at Rey. She noticed Chewie hesitated for a second to return Rey's embrace, and when he did, he looked like he was cold.

She noticed Rey had made a lot of people feel that way ever since her return.

"What are you thinking?" she heard Finn's sweet, gentle voice ask.

She looked to him and then back at Rey. For a long time, she thought the two inseparable. They clicked so well together. It reminded her of the bond she and Paige had shared. But now, they just seemed to be complete opposites down to their morals. Finn was such a cinnamon roll, while Rey seemed like this dark shadow.

"The greatest loyalty is that towards yourself, Finn," she finally said as she turned her head towards him, feeling a measure of trepidation as she did. She felt like one era was coming to an end, and another was just beginning. "Please, no matter what happens, please don't forget that."

Her pleading gaze was one he was unable to resist, nor did he really want to. He knew from experience that Rose was right one-hundred percent of the time. If she had a bad feeling about something, then Finn knew to take it seriously. She told him to not betray himself, but he also got what she was trying to say in between the lines, and was partly thankful she didn't actually say it. It allowed them to pretend everything was alright for just a while longer.

The former stormtrooper nodded. He trusted Rose very much. But enough to turn away from Rey? He didn't know the answer to that yet.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

**_That's chapter eight! In this one, I fail to resist writing more about my OCs, we find out the ultimate fate of the Ghost crew, the Resistance discovers a different side to the First Order, Rey takes a hardline stance on the First Order, and it stirs up internal conflict in the Resistance._**

**_I did go back and change a line in chapter 6 referring to the last time Mika wielded a lightsaber. I just worded it to be more vague, because it allowed for more flexibility._**

**_I originally was going to do this chapter a lot differently and have just the Resistance stuff, but then I had a great idea to do for the next bit I wanted to do. It's just that, with that idea, this chapter would've been either way too long because I decided to include it, or way too short because I moved it to the next chapter, and I didn't want that inconsistency. So then I thought of the stuff regarding the fate of the Rebels characters, and I found a way to tie that into the story and fill in that gap. It may not make sense now, but rest assured, that part does have a purpose._**

**_Again, Rey's actions are done not necessarily because she's evil, but because she believes she's right. But then again, every villain believes they're the good guy. Her actions are driven by the desire to stop something like what happened to her – losing Ben, someone she loved deeply – from happening to anyone else. But at the same time, she doesn't care how she achieves that. That last point in particular is the main one that puts some of the Resistance at odds with her._**

**_I've always wanted to see more regarding the First Order stormtroopers. I felt they had a great chance to really expose them to be just soldiers doing their duty just like the Resistance, but they didn't and just made Finn a traitor with no remorse for his former brothers and sisters and made the First Order stormtroopers carbon copies of Imperial stormtroopers. Considering Finn's loyalty, I feel like he wouldn't be so quick to kill them, but perhaps he just didn't think about it when there was a mask in between them. But now, with the helmetless troopers, he's forced to confront that he was gunning down his former comrades, people he once knew._**

**_That's about it out of me. If you enjoyed, then give this story a favorite, follow it, and leave a review! I love answering them!_**


	9. Chapter 9

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Nine**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

"Zorii?!" Poe called out as he ran through the alleys, trying to find her. "Zorii?!"

Rey really delayed him with her little talk, so he had to play some serious catch-up with the former bounty hunter. Considering how mad she seemed to be, he figured it best to hurry and find her, and hopefully smooth things over.

He then reached a more open, multilevel area. Finally, he caught sight of her purple-clad figure a level below, at a railing by the gap created by the skyway, just standing there and looking up at all the buildings. On Coruscant, the absence of light grew stronger the lower they went. The darkness grew daunting.

He took one last moment to prepare himself for what he imagined was a massive scathing. With that extra courage, he approached her, passing a weapons cache with some Smart Rocket launchers atop it.

Zorii stared up into the entrenched darkness, searching for any speck of light. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to finally be free from the life of the underworld and reconcile with Poe. Explore life and its beauty, after experiencing its ugliness for years. For the first time in a long time, she had hope.

But then Rey returned. That's when everything changed.

She threw a wrench into their reviving relationship. She was driving a wedge between them, preying on Poe's loyalties and using them to turn him against Zorii. And the worst of it was that Rey knew him better than she did now. She knew the right words to say to keep Poe on a leash, and was also smart enough to restrain herself enough to maintain that innocent image, something Poe would fall for hook, line, and sinker. He couldn't help himself from being the hero.

But Zorii could see who she really was: a feral animal. She saw it even when they first met, when she leveled that blue laser sword at her face. That was pure primal instinct she saw in her eyes. She knew because she had been the same way once: the 'shoot first, no questions asked' kind of person.

She felt a presence approach behind her. In the blink of an eye, she drew one of her pistols and leveled it at the intruder's head.

Poe looked at the end of the barrel pointedly, completely unsurprised. He was kind of used to it by now. But the look in her eyes – sadness that she tried to cover with anger – told him she was on the edge of lashing out. There was a very real chance she would pull that trigger.

"Could I have some last words first?" he remarked, cracking a roguish smile, attempting to bring some levity and de-escalate the situation.

In the blink of an eye, all her anger washed away. How was it that Poe could always do that to her? It had happened before. She had spent years stewing her anger at him for leaving, only for it to wash away the moment she laid eyes on him again on Kijimi.

Lowering her pistol but not re-holstering it, she warned him, "You better have a damn good reason for going along with the farce Rey's propping up."

"Hey, she's trying to make a better galaxy," Poe defended. He was also somewhat frustrated at her inability to understand that.

"In the worst way possible!" She shot a doubtful look at him. She couldn't believe how blind he was. "I may not be as smart as you, but executing people who have already surrendered has _got_ to be a war crime! How can you stand there and be okay with that?!"

He was ready to continue arguing, but he quickly realized he had nothing to counter with. Nothing substantial. "Sometimes we have to do things we don't like to make a better future."

"Where do you draw the line, then? Is the creation of a dictatorship still a good idea if it's supposedly for the greater good?" The annoyed sarcasm in her voice was prevalent.

"I want to make a difference!" he finally snapped, her persistence finally getting to him.

He saw the hurt in her eyes, and realized that was the wrong thing to say.

"Yeah. You said the same thing when you left," she muttered bitterly, looking away.

She remembered that moment like it was yesterday. She saw how bright-eyed and excited he was to join the New Republic navy. Seeing him so happy did make her happy, but then there was the other part of her. The part of her that felt selfish and was distraught with him leaving. What they had... did it even mean anything, if he was so willing to leave her behind?

It was only recently that Poe realized how much he had hurt Zorii when he left. For so long, he was riding the high of being the hotshot ace pilot that he didn't even think about it. But when faced with returning to Kijimi, he had been afraid to go back, because he knew he would have to face her. Now, she had made it clear that he had wronged her tremendously.

"I was so sure that you were a different man from the one I knew, but then we talked and you were still the same. I thought that was great." She then looked back towards him, a betrayed look on her face. "But then it wasn't. You truly haven't changed a bit; you still just want to be the hero."

That stung Poe greatly. Hearing someone talk about his passions like it was just some way to cover up his insecurities really bit at him. But hearing _her_ specifically say all that was like a punch to the gut. He could brush off most anyone's harsh words, but not hers. Hers always left a mark on him.

Behind the both of them, a glimmer of white armor shone as its helmetless wearer stealthily made his way across the plaza. He kept an eye on Resistance General Poe Dameron and what looked like a female bounty hunter as he snuck over towards the weapons cache, attempting to not alert them.

Further back, on the same lower level as him and on the upper level, his comrades shifted into position to cover him with their FWMB-10 repeating blasters – fantastic when it came to suppressive fire – just in case. They needed those rockets, otherwise the Resistance would crush them.

Poe felt so insignificant under Zorii's unrelenting words. He wasn't used to feeling that way. "Well, what else am I good for?" he posed to her. "You know that there was nothing else going for me before I got that offer."

She couldn't help but feel a twinge of pity for him at the sheer resignation in his voice. It was almost as if he believed himself inadequate. That wasn't like the Poe she knew. In her experience, he was just the opposite: always playing himself up to look better than he really was.

"Look, Zorii," he sighed. "I'm just trying to be the best man I can be."

Out of the corner of her attention, she caught an anomaly. A flash of polished white behind them. Alarm bells rang in her head as their eyes locked.

"I want to be better for-"

Though it required courage to say what he wanted to say, he was cut off when Zorii shoved him to the side with one arm, her other raising the pistol she never put away to fire at the trooper.

It was only thanks to their locking gazes that the trooper had just enough of a notice to evade the shot, stumbling over his feet and nearly tripping. With two rocket launchers over his shoulders, he didn't waste any time and just ran back for his comrades.

When her shot rang out, it provoked retaliation from the other troopers.

"Engage!"

Immediately, Zorii and Poe were met with a barrage of blaster fire. The former bounty hunter fired one last shot at the fleeing rocket-thieving trooper before being forced to dive for cover with Poe.

She pulled out her other pistol and peeked out of cover, only to immediately duck back in and avoid a torrent of blaster fire. A glance at Poe showed he was blindsided and caught completely off guard. Only now did he have his pistol drawn.

"Just like old times, huh?" she remarked, aiming to bring some levity.

Poe looked at her incredulously, wondering why she was bringing that up at a time like this. "Which time? The time we had to escape a New Republic prison ship, the time we got set up on Kessel, or the time we got drunk on Kijimi and started a gang war?"

"All of them!" She stood and peeked out of cover just enough to aim and release a brief salvo of blaster fire from her pistols, re-entering cover shortly after.

Poe thought she looked like such a symbol of strength, facing down multiple adversaries with nothing but a couple of high-power blaster pistols. She was not a pushover whatsoever. And he couldn't help but love that about her.

He peeked above the crate they used for cover, only to immediately get back down when a rapid burst of blaster fire nearly took his head off.

He couldn't face down the troopers fearlessly like Zorii, at least on the ground, so he instead chose to remain safe and blindly fire his pistol above cover. He wasn't nearly as good with blasters as she was. He had always been the pilot between them, and she the shooter. Granted, they helped each other out with the skills they lacked: he taught her how to fly, and she had taught him how to shoot a blaster. But between them, he was still the better pilot, and she the better shooter.

From behind them, on the other side of the skyway, came a flash out of darkness.

Following it immediately came the distinct booming crack of an NT-242 high-caliber longblaster. The incredible blast completely chewed up a concrete pillar one trooper was taking cover behind. Though it was just barely too thick to allow the blast to hit the trooper on the other side, it was a clear example of the sheer power of the weapon. It was also an eye-opener to the troopers that they were now outmatched. That in itself wasn't too concerning insofar as completing their mission, as their main objective was simply to get the rockets. Rather, it simply let them know that it just got a lot harder to escape.

"Retreat! Let's go!"

With that command, all of the troopers ran for it, some of them returning fire sporadically when confronted with the extra blaster fire coming from the same area as the sniper shot. Whoever that sniper was had company.

Now no longer under attack, Poe and Zorii recognized that this was the time to counterattack. They both stepped up and returned fire with their pistols, using the unexpected long-range support to their advantage.

She nearly got a shot on the rocket-thieving trooper, but he managed to evade only by his own desperation to escape back to safety. It was either run or die for the troopers. If they surrendered or were captured, they would die anyway. And they all knew this.

Despite being under heavy fire – not just from Resistance General Poe Dameron and the unknown bounty hunter but also from the unknown reinforcements from across the skyway – the small squad of First Order troopers managed to escape. The fear of certain death spurred them on; it made them stronger than before.

Both Poe and Zorii looked to each other, breathing heavily from the adrenaline. As both re-holstered their pistols, they looked into each other's eyes, fully blown with lust. For a moment, it was just like old times between them, just living each day at a time. Both had fond memories of the past between them, and it invigorated both their hearts to relive that for a moment.

But then Poe felt his comm go off.

Answering, he saw the blue hologram of Zay Meeko – daughter of Del Meeko and Iden Versio, both part of the infamous Inferno Squad within the Empire – smirking at him. "_You're welcome,_" she said lightly.

Poe shook his head fondly. Of course it was her that saved their behinds. Only the new Inferno Squad were so stealthy yet bold. "Thanks, Zay. I owe you one." He then saw another figure on the outskirts of the hologram's reach. Even with that little to go off, he recognized the person. "Hey, Shriv."

The old, grizzled Duros grumbled, "_Yeah, yeah, hi._"

It was always refreshing, Poe found, to be in the grace of Shriv Suurgav. He was always good, entertaining company.

"_Don't be such a dummy, Poe,_" Zay advised in farewell, cutting the comm right after.

The pilot wanted to talk to Zorii now while he still had the courage to do so. He was ready to finally say it. He faced her again…

… only to find her already walking away, back the direction he had come looking for her.

"Come on dummy, let's go!" she called out to him, not stopping for him.

He sighed in both disappointment and exasperation as his arms clapped against his sides. She must still be mad about Rey's execution order. But dammit, was it frustrating to get so close and yet remain so far away.

"You see, Zorii, I want to be better for _you,_" he finished to himself what he wanted to say earlier. Even knowing she wouldn't hear it.

"Because you deserve better."

XXXXXXXXXX

"So, what have you found?" Rey prompted Beaumont Kin.

Both of them as well as Chewie stood before the former Imperial Palace. Though long since abandoned, it seemed untouched even after all these years. In the Force, the place felt like a dark, haunting stain on the planet. Perhaps that was enough to keep people away from it, even long after the fall of the Empire.

"We hit a block straight out the gate. From what we've seen, there's no way to open the doors," Beaumont answered Rey's query. "No handles, no electronic locks, nothing. The doors have to be opened through some other way."

Rey nodded. "That makes sense." At his curious look, she clarified. "This used to be the Jedi Temple."

"But the Emperor was a Sith," he countered, confused.

"Jedi, Sith, it doesn't make a difference." She waved it off. "They're more similar than you think. There's little that one side tried that the other didn't try also. It stands to reason they would both utilize doors that could only be opened using the Force." Her hand gestured out to the palace. "The Jedi may have originally created this temple, but the Emperor seems to have kept much of the basic design when he refurbished it."

"Huh," he went, fascinated with how much he was learning. "I didn't know that."

"Of course you wouldn't," Rey quipped, uncaring of how offensive she sounded.

She never held much fondness for Beaumont Kin. She always thought he bragged about his knowledge. Though it proved useful when it came to finding and eliminating her grandfather, it made her feel inadequate about how much more he knew when it came to the history of the Jedi. But she knew more about the Force from a practical perspective, and no longer did she care about specifically learning Jedi history. Knowledge was knowledge, no matter where it came from. And knowledge, was power.

"Get out of my sight." She dismissively waved him away.

He looked at her weirdly as he left, like he didn't know her at all. That satisfied her in a twisted way. The way she saw it, no one really knew her. No one still alive, at least.

"Chewie," she looked to the Wookie standing to her right. "Thank you."

She meant it. She really needed his great comfort after talking about Ben.

He moaned an inquiry.

She smiled and replied, "Yes, I'm okay now."

The Wookie moaned again, this time in concern.

She gave him a friendly, reassuring pat on the arm. "Don't worry, I can handle myself."

Chewie nodded hesitantly. He still felt something was wrong with her. He could see her fists were clenched, like they had always been ever since she returned. It reminded him so much of little Ben when he was still Kylo Ren. But he could see in her eyes that bright, young girl in her.

With that, they parted ways.

Finally alone, Rey turned back and strode alone towards the Imperial Palace, formerly the Jedi Temple. Something called to her within the building, and she didn't want her dark curiosities to turn her loyal friends against her.

She reached the entrance. Like Beaumont had said, it was not a conventional door. It was one that could only be opened using the Force.

Not a problem for her. With a wave of her hand, she flung the entrance open. The darkness within stared back at her ominously.

She was not afraid of the dark. Especially not now. She headed inside.

Once she was inside, she closed the way behind her. It was no one else's concern what she was doing here.

Once the last bit of light vanished and total darkness surrounded her, she brandished her lightsaber, flipping it into its staff position and igniting it. Blood red light lit her surroundings.

She walked throughout the palace, following the call she felt yet also taking in the place with the light she had. As much as she hated her grandfather, she had to admit he knew how to live luxuriously. It was the direct opposite of how she had lived most of her life. She couldn't help but wonder: had she been raised by him, would she have lived the same way? A part of her found that higher class lifestyle attractive, if only because she grew up the lowest of the low.

As she walked and navigated each floor on the way to her destination, she came across several different artifacts interspersed throughout the palace. She saw some that Luke had detailed in his books, one such being a large vase found on the planet Zeffo. According to the text, it was believed to be used in training Zeffo Force-wielders.

There were several Jedi as well as Sith artifacts she came across as well, and even artifacts she didn't recognize as being from either sect. Many of them she had never seen before. It interested her. Just from this great collection, she could tell that her grandfather had an exceeding knowledge of the Force. Even just a quick glance in the library further confirmed that. There was so much knowledge in this one building, all of it now available to her.

Finally, after climbing up the central spire, she arrived at the entrance to the throne room. Above the entry was a large painting of a woman in black brandishing a red lightsaber. For some reason, she looked extremely familiar.

Rey squinted. It took a moment, but with a start, she finally realized who was in the painting.

It was herself.

She didn't know what to think. How was there a painting of herself here? She had never set foot in here before. More importantly, when was this put up? The Imperial Palace had been abandoned for over thirty years now, let alone how she hadn't even existed until ten years after its abandonment.

A closer look told her that she was a little bit different in the painting than she was now. This was a Rey that was fully confident in her power, yet one who was also more monstrous. That deadly smirk that painted her lips was even more poisonous than her own thanks to sharpened teeth, like that of a predator. Deathly pale skin, with contrasting golden eyes, made her look inhuman.

Rey grit her teeth. She would _not_ end up that way. That painting meant nothing.

With that resolute denial, she used the Force to open the door.

Immediately upon entering, she noticed how open the throne room was. It was large and there were actually windows in the room. For the first time, she could actually see out of the building. The windows featured a distinct spider web-like design, much like she had seen on the Death Star II's throne room. Outside of them, lied the Coruscant skyline. The buildings weren't lit up like they had been centuries prior thanks to the ongoing scattered battles. Power had only been restored to a handful of districts so far.

Regardless, there was enough light filtering in from the stars. Hence, she silenced her lightsaber, the unstable blood red blades all too happy to retreat back into the hilt.

She made her way up the steps to the throne, to the calling she felt. It was the very same throne she had seen on the Death Star II, only this one was merely deserted, not crippled.

Once upon a time, her grandfather sat on that throne. And what better way to show she had defeated him than to claim his throne as her own?

With that sense of superiority in mind, she claimed her grandfather's throne, now _her_ throne. She perched herself on it very properly, hands folded over the lightsaber resting on the edge of her lap, like a princess. Technically, she _was_ a princess. But it was only now she got to embrace her royal birthright.

A blinking button on the armrest caught her attention. Strange. This whole palace felt dead, so why this sign of activity?

She was too curious, though. She pressed it.

A hologram appeared before her, stood at the top of the steps to her throne. Then one word was crooned by it.

"_Granddaughter._"

By _him._

The former Emperor Sheev Palpatine.

Immediately, her anger, her rage, flared intensely. She didn't even notice she had ignited her lightsaber again. She was just so consumed with the hatred she felt towards her grandfather that it overrode all other thoughts.

The Emperor smiled in that twisted way of his: that he knew something the other did not. "_I knew you would come._"

Rey's glare was smoldering enough to light a match. "How?" she growled out.

"_Thanks to a place between places… a world between worlds… I foresee **everything,**_" his gravelly voice revealed. His lips twisted in an ironic smirk. "_I foresee you killing me decades from now. And I foresee everything will proceed according to my design._"

Rey didn't know what to think. Even though she knew for a fact her grandfather was dead, he somehow was able to still plague the galaxy from beyond the grave. He could communicate to her in real time while he was in the past, from a time before her own existence, which boggled her mind. It made her realize her grandfather was powerful beyond her own comprehension. And yet also, it made her so angry that he just wouldn't _die_ for good.

It also angered her that he had foreseen her killing him. He had all the time to avoid that fate, yet he didn't. It made her victory over him feel worthless, because now she realized she had given him exactly what he wanted by killing him. And she hated giving him what he desired.

"_You are so unlike your father. In a good way._"

Bringing up her parents spiked her rage. "Don't talk of him like that!"

"**_My son,_**" Sheev's own restrained rage shined, "_was a **coward.** I gave him everything he needed to become great, and yet he never used any of it. He had no courage, no initiative, no cause he believed in._" He smiled cruelly. "_You could say he was the opposite of young Luke Skywalker._"

The way he said 'Skywalker' sounded so nauseating and disgusting and filthy. So much so, that Rey even felt dirty just having known him. The way Sheev merely said his name made her want to disassociate herself from her former master even more than she already did.

"_While young Skywalker had **nothing** but courage, my son had **everything** but courage._"

Though Rey did ultimately agree and thought that her father keeping her away from her grandfather was the _only_ good thing he ever did, she didn't want him to know that she agreed with him on anything, solely out of spite.

"_He only grew a semblance of a spine once he met your street rat thief of a mother, after the fall of my Empire. And even then, it took years for him to agree to take you away. But **you** are different._" He closed his eyes as he seemed to relish that fact. "_I felt it when you were born in my ancestral home on Naboo… I felt just how special you were._"

She was born on Naboo? It didn't matter too much to her since she never knew the planet, but at least it was a question she didn't have to wonder about anymore. She truly did not remember anything about the planet, but from a quick deduction, she can assume she was around five-ish when her parents left her. She did not remember anything else before that, so if what her grandfather said was true, she must've lived on Naboo, in her family's ancestral home, for those first five years of her life.

"_You were my contingency, meant to carry on the ways of the Sith in the event I passed on. **You** are my greatest achievement._" Sheev looked upon her with twisted pride. "_Even greater than Darth Vader._"

She hated her grandfather so much, but even she had to admit, that stoked her ego like little else. To now be seen as superior to the man that Kylo Ren held in such high esteem felt good. Because, though she hated her grandfather more, she also hated Kylo Ren. She hated how inferior she was to him, how he always seemed to have the upper hand over her. Now, she felt like she has one upped him.

But just getting one over on Kylo Ren was not enough for her. She wanted to be superior to her grandfather as well. What better way was there to stick it to him?

"Even greater than _you,_ you shriveled old man," she countered with a hiss. "When people speak the Palpatine name in the future, they won't think of _you._ They'll think of _me._ I will be far greater than you ever were."

Oh, it felt so good to openly defy him. She wanted to stick it to her grandfather as much as she possibly could. The hatred she felt for him was blinding. And if there was one person who deserved all of her hatred, it was him. He was the one who had corrupted Ben Solo into Kylo Ren. He ultimately orchestrated the encounter that caused his death. There was no one she hated more than her grandfather.

"_Yes, you will be,_" he crooned, that evil grin splitting his disfigured face. "_After all, it is as they say: 'history is written by the victor.'_"

The fact that he still had that twisted smirk made her feel so angry. He seemed to talk as if he had still won, even in death.

The truth of the matter was, he had. He pushed Rey far enough that she would willingly give him exactly what he desired: his legacy immortalized forever, thanks to her. With the last Skywalker removed from the picture, she could no longer resist the call to the Dark Side. She would carry on the legacy of the Sith, even if only to spite him. It was all too easy to stoke her hatred, her anger. Sheev was all too gleeful that everything had worked out as he had foreseen.

And Rey was blind to all of it. She had no idea she was playing into his hand. The hatred was too strong for her to think of anything other than destroying the legacy he had left behind.

"Then I will be sure to see your legacy wiped from the history texts," she sharply retorted. "As is my right as the victor."

Sheev just chuckled in dark amusement. Oh, how naïve she was. "_Then you will be pleased to know that my legacy is now yours. Do with it what you will._"

The confusion was plain as day across Rey's deathly pale face. What was his angle with this? "What do you mean?"

"_Everything I own, I have left to you._" He saw she was still confused, so he placed special emphasis. "**_Everything._**"

A wave of his hand let to another hologram coming up in between them detailing exactly what he meant: a _Xyston_-class Star Destroyer, specifically the _Derriphan._ Lines of text detailed its weaponry and crew, pictures and profiles of the ship's command were provided, any detail that could prove useful when forging a battle plan was there.

Including the communication codes to contact it.

"_Use it wisely,_" her grandfather advised with a rotting grin, "_and nothing will stop you, **Empress Palpatine.**_"

At his taunt, she gave him a withering glare, but did not object. Though there was power with that name and title, a part of her also despised it solely because it was what her grandfather desired.

Sheev's hologram then disappeared, though the hologram of the _Derriphan_ remained.

With the source of her rage now gone, she retracted her lightsaber blades and her haze of anger receded. She recognized now that she had an important choice to make.

Option one: she could kill the hologram, and pretend this whole thing never happened. She immediately scrapped that one, because the power the _Derriphan_ had could not be allowed to run freely.

Option two: she could locate the Star Destroyer and order the Resistance to destroy it. The problem she saw with that option, though, was that the _Derriphan's_ sheer resilience would make it so any attack on it would claim a great number of Resistance fighters. She saw that amount of loss as excessive and needless.

Then there was option three: take command of the Star Destroyer and use it to serve her own goals. That sounded like the best option. It would avoid unnecessary loss of life and, what she prioritized more, would keep the power of the _Derriphan_ under her control.

Something else also played a part in her decision-making. For the first time since Tatooine, she felt _light._ But unlike back then, she recoiled at it now.

"_Jedi,_" she snarled as she stood up and began pacing like a caged animal. "I did what you asked. I destroyed your ancient enemy. And then you just _left_ me." There was so much hatred in her that it was just begging to be let out. And she did. Dramatically so.

"AND THEN YOU LET BEN KILL HIMSELF FOR ME!"

She reignited her lightsaber and, with an angry yell, furiously threw it at a wall. Sparks flew from where the blades impacted.

"YOU SHOULD'VE BEEN WITH _HIM!_"

She then buried her face into her hands, muffling her sobs. Why did Ben have to die? It should've been her instead. She can't bear living without him. The pain of being forced to live without him was greater than anything she had experienced before. Not even when her parents left her did she feel as much pain as she did now.

It took a moment for her to compose herself. The red light in the room from her thrown saber reminded her she had lost control of her emotions again. But she was beyond caring about that anymore. Why should she care about Jedi teachings and philosophy when they failed her? She called her saber back to her hand, disengaging the blades when it smacked into her hand before folding it back up and holstering it.

Now back in control, she took back her seat on her throne and focused on that feeling of light, trying to find out where it was. It wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. It felt like she was connected to it in some way. It felt like a person, one so familiar. But it was impossible. Ben Solo was dead. Whoever this… this _impostor_ was… enraged her.

"I can feel you, whoever you are," she muttered to herself. "And you will die."

With her perception of how the Light Side had betrayed her – had taken away that which she desired most – she finally came to a decision. With her choice in mind, she pressed a button on her throne's armrest.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Captain, we're receiving a holo-transmission request," one of the comms officers notified from the pit aboard the bridge of the _Derriphan._

Captain Chesille Sabrond did not turn away from the window leading to the deep, pitch black depths of space. "Denied," she flatly refused.

She refused because she knew it was possible to trace her ship's location just through a holo-transmission. She would not allow her ship to be so exposed and vulnerable. Instead, she continued her musings, standing there with both hands folded behind her back.

A woman of discipline, it was hard to get her to change her mind. But she was good at following orders. She was aware of the destruction of the Sith fleet, and that her ship was the last of it. She also understood it meant she was no longer under anyone's command. It was a situation she wasn't used to, and didn't really like. She was trained to follow orders to the letter.

"Ma'am," the officer spoke again seconds later. "Whoever sent the request has sent another. It seems they are insistent to talk."

She turned her head, catching the gaze of Lieutenant Milon Lenwith, her second-in-command. There was no one whose opinion she trusted more than his.

And the look he sent her was one which reckoned this was a situation worth checking out.

Finally turning to face away from the window, she said, "Put them through."

A moment later, a large hologram of a head sprung up, filling the bridge. It was a woman, not one she recognized though felt similar to someone else she knew, covered by a hood. She had a huge presence on the bridge, literally as well as figuratively, as she stared down at her.

That did not intimidate the Captain, though. She had been in the presence of her Emperor over hologram. And she had great discipline.

"Who dares to contact this-AH!"

She was cut off at the end of her query as an invisible force pulled her down by the neck and slammed her into the floor, then dragged her across the floor to the other side of the bridge, now just behind the hologram. She was then forcibly turned around upon passing the large hologram.

The rest of the bridge remained silent. Nobody thought it wise to do anything for the moment, lest they encounter similar consequences.

"_That is no way to greet your rightful Empress,_" the woman chastised her in a voice that made her skin crawl as her hologram momentarily phased out before reappearing, now with her head turned around to face her.

The combination of the whispery, serpent-like voice, the hooded figure, and the title she used jarred the Captain's brain. She knew who she was now.

She felt the invisible force recede from around her neck. She put her fallen cap back on as she got up to her knees before the woman. "My sincerest apologies, my Empress," she bowed her head to her subserviently.

Everyone else on the bridge followed her example, kneeling to her in submission.

"_See that it does not happen again, or else your Lieutenant will be up for a promotion,_" Rey warned.

Chesille nodded her understanding. Then, she asked a question that burned at her mind. If she was Empress now… "My Empress, do you know what happened to our Emperor?"

She saw Rey's features twist in barely controlled rage. "_My grandfather is dead. I have taken his place._"

The Captain felt that invisible grip tighten just enough around her throat to level a threat against her.

"_I will not hear anymore of him from now on._"

Chesille quickly nodded, and the grip loosened.

"_Now,_" Rey leaned forward, her hologram looming over the Captain menacingly, "_I have a target for you to destroy._"

If there was one thing Captain Chesille Sabrond was good at, it was following orders. Her Empress' commands were no different. "Name it, my Empress, and it will be gone."

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**There's chapter nine! In this, Poe and Zorii have a lovers' spat, they get ambushed by desperate Stormtroopers, they get their asses saved by Inferno Squad, Rey investigates the Imperial Palace alone, has a LOVELY chat with Grandpapa Palpatine, and gains control over a planet-killing Star Destroyer.**_

_**I went back to chapter 8 and clarified Ezra and Sabine's fate. I left it vague at first because I thought I might get to explain it later, but then I realized there was no time for it so I decided to just put it in there.**_

_**I actually am really interested in Zay. I thought the Resurrection DLC for Battlefront II really gave her a great jumping-off point for making an interesting story for her. For any talented writer, please get out there and do her justice!**_

_**Now, the big guest of this chapter: Palpatine! Or rather, just Sheev, since there are now two people with Palpatine as their last name. Or maybe Grandpapa Palpatine? I actually really loved him in TROS. I would've loved him anyway, because it's Ian McDiarmid playing him. He can literally do no wrong. But I actually understood what the Emperor was doing, what his plan was. It was basically just like what he was doing all throughout the prequels and what he did with Luke and Vader: playing both sides, that way he wins no matter what. He supported both Rey's and Kylo's claims to his throne, Rey through right of birth and Kylo by right of conquest.**_

_**I kind of incorporated parts of that mentality here. Even though he's dead, he's always going to have multiple contingencies in place to make sure his influence continues to live on, even if it's through Rey unwittingly upholding his legacy. He literally cannot lose. He has prepared for everything; as such, he will always win.**_

_**I came up with the backstory for Rey's parents all on my own. As far as I'm aware, none of what I've used is actual canon. I've had the idea that her parents were like this ever since I saw the movie. Her father, the antithesis of Luke Skywalker, and her mother, a thief living from one day to the next. I didn't specify whether or not her father was a clone, because in the end it doesn't really matter. But personally, I treat him as if he was created the conventional way. It's so true to life that these monstrous people can still get some action. Some people out there have no standards, and would gladly sell their soul to the devil. It makes things more complicated, and I like complicated things. It's why my favorite Star Wars movie is Revenge of the Sith and why I absolutely LOVE the prequels.**_

_**Contrastingly, Rey actually was born on Naboo in canon, though there are no details of her early life on Naboo besides that. Well, not that I know of. I actually really like that idea because it fits her character. Naboo is a beautiful place, but she never knew it, much like how she doesn't know her own beauty.**_

_**Well, that's all I have to say. If you enjoyed, please feel free to fave, follow, and leave a review!**_


	10. Chapter 10

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Ten**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

As the _Mantis_ careened through hyperspace, Ben sat on the bunk in the back of the ship, staring down at the yellow lightsaber in his hands that Rey had forged.

He couldn't believe he was actually doing this: going back to his home world. A year ago, he wouldn't have even considered the idea. But then everything with the Emperor had happened, and he had seen Rey dead. He knew he couldn't live on without her, so he decided to bring her back, even if the cost for it turned out to be his own life. It wasn't so bad, though. At least his soul had chosen to adhere itself to hers in the process. He could live on just listening to her, knowing and feeling she was alive. Maybe not as well as she could be, but alive nonetheless. Then he witnessed Rey's grief-driven descent into darkness. While unsurprising – he had always known there was darkness in her that was just begging to be let out – it still was hard to stomach.

But then, when he least expected it, he was given a second chance, to make things right. He resolved to not waste it.

He lightly caressed the hilt of the yellow lightsaber. It was strange. Though Rey had indeed made it, it didn't call to her. At least, it didn't as of now. It didn't call to him, either, but strangely, it felt like it still belonged at his side in some way. It felt protective of him, not something Ben had ever experienced before, even with his own saber before he had bled it.

And now, when he wanted to put it back in his bag, it seemed to cry in protest.

"Don't worry, I'm coming back," he reassured it with a warm tone, giving it a gentle caress. It felt incredibly weird to comfort an inanimate object, yet somehow it felt right in this case. Ben knew better than anyone that kyber crystals were sentient to a degree. And this one felt very, startlingly human. This one seemed to feel the full spectrum of emotions any other being could feel.

At his reassurance, the saber seemed to finally surrender itself over to the bag and no longer fought Ben.

"_We're coming up on our destination,_" he heard Cal's voice over the ship's intercom.

Well, here he was. Time to face the music. He stood up from the bunk and made his way to the front of the ship.

Just as he entered the cockpit, the ship pulled out of hyperspace, showcasing his home world.

"Well, welcome to Chandrila," Ben remarked to Merrin and Cal, plus BD-1.

Merrin thought it was beautiful. It was full of greenery and oceans, balanced out with the grand and elegant architecture of its capital, Hanna City, and it was just stunning. She had seen a few planets of similar beauty out of the many places she and Cal and their family had been to – Takodana, most notably – but considering she had spent her entire childhood and adolescence on Dathomir, a desolate planet that reeked of death, she had a special place in her heart for planets like Chandrila. Planets like this one – those filled with lush greenery and gorgeous nature – were some of her favorites to visit.

Ben was apprehensive. It had been so long since he had last been on Chandrila, two full decades to be exact. But there was no stopping it now. He had made his bed. Now it was time to lay in it. He decided to return, so he would.

Cal said nothing as he landed the ship. The revelation of who Darth Vader once was hung over him like a shadow. And now he was shuttling around that man's grandson. He could forgive Kylo Ren, as he had not done anything personal to him, but Darth Vader was different. And now that he knew the connection between the two, it made him question how he felt towards Ben.

Ben left the cockpit and dropped the ramp, leaving the setting sun to shine its rays on him. As he was ready to leave, though, a soft, almost motherly, grip around his arm stopped him.

"Ben," Merrin said. The concern was evident in her gaze. "If you need our help, you need only ask. You do know that, right?"

He nodded. He did greatly appreciate her offer. He could feel it within her that, though she was strong in the Dark Side, she was genuine in how much she cared. It was paradoxical to both the Jedi and the Sith, but Ben felt that was because neither of them truly understood emotions. The Jedi tried to suppress them, while the Sith tried to embrace them, both sides to unhealthy levels.

"I do," he affirmed. "And thank you. You know you don't have to do this."

"I do not do this because I feel like I _have_ to," the Nightsister replied, shaking her head in mild astonishment that he didn't get it. "I do it because I _want_ to."

With that, Ben knew that Merrin was one of the greatest women he had ever met, right up there with his mother and Rey. Though all were different in their own ways, they all held two things in common: they all cared strongly, and all of them had each given life to him in some way; Leia through actually giving birth to him, Rey through healing him from a fatal wound, and Merrin through resurrecting him.

"Again, thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me." Still, though, he couldn't help looking past her back towards the cockpit in wary concern. "Though I'm not sure _he_ feels the same."

Merrin looked back over her shoulder, noticing Cal walk out of the cockpit and towards the lounge area with BD-1 astride his back, before he jumped off towards the kitchen. She noted how he purposely didn't look over in Ben's direction. She could feel the dark, stormy haze that seemed to dwell over her Jedi's mind. Finding out the truth about Darth Vader had not sat well with him.

"He does care," she replied, looking back towards Ben. She knew Cal's mind perhaps better than her own. "He is just confused right now. I will talk with him."

Ben nodded his understanding. He was already apprehensive enough about returning home. He didn't wish to push his luck with Cal.

"May the Force be with you," Merrin bid him farewell, smiling warmly at him. It was unusual for her to say such a thing – she wouldn't have ever said such a thing to her sisters; instead, she likely would've wished for her sisters and mother to give them strength – but she felt it was something someone like him would appreciate.

Ben also recognized the irony of a Nightsister saying that. He got the idea that she cared enough for him to step out of her comfort zone for him. And he greatly appreciated it.

With a final smile of thanks, he walked down the ramp.

Merrin went over to the kitchen, gave BD-1 a little affectionate pet and fixed herself up a special drink, using several ingredients from her stash of potions materials. She felt Cal's curious gaze on her, but made it a point to not initiate any sort of talk between them. She wanted him to talk first.

When she finished making her glowing green refreshment, she took a seat along the couch, pointedly not beside Cal.

The Jedi wasn't exactly in the mood to talk, but he was too curious about what she was drinking. He knew what it was – she had drunk it before – but he didn't know why she chose to drink it now of all times. "Why are you drinking that?"

Merrin held her finger up as she finished drinking. Though seemingly a polite gesture, Cal recognized she did not at all intend it that way. In fact, it was the opposite, as she seemed to stretch out every last gulp as long as she could.

It took seemingly forever for her to finish. When she did, she stretched the time a little longer by delicately setting her glass atop the table.

"I feel it will be useful now that Ben is with us," she replied.

Cal's temper flared at the mention of Vader's grandson. "Perhaps it wasn't smart of us to pick him up then, if danger follows him so closely."

Merrin shot a scathing glare of disapproval and disappointment at him. "Spare me your petulance, Cal. It is unbecoming of you."

"I'm sorry, but I don't see why we should be helping someone like _him,_" he returned, not sounding sorry at all.

"Those were not your thoughts when we first picked him up. You never had a problem with Kylo Ren, even after the girls crossed his path."

"That was before I knew he was Vader's grandson!" Cal finally lost it and stood up, looking ready to destroy something. "Had I known back then, I would've killed him before he could so much as lay eyes on them!"

"Like you would have with me?" Merrin darkly retorted.

The change in conversation threw him off. What was she talking about?

"Remember? On Dathomir?" She stood up, challenging him. "'If you attack me again, I'll strike you down?'"

He was struck wordless at her. If she was referring to back when they had first met, then… well, she was actually right. He did remember being ready to kill her if it was necessary. But it wasn't.

And he couldn't believe she was bringing that back up. "That's different," he finally said after a long, uncertain pause.

"How?" she challenged, getting up close with him. "He and I are not so different. We are both people who have made mistakes in the past, but want to be better now. _What_ is it that makes you think of us so differently?"

The accusation was clear, and both of them knew it: he was prejudicing Ben solely for being related to Darth Vader. The way Merrin accused him without doing so outright made him feel like a total sleemo. He fell back onto the couch, defeated.

With the look she gave him, he knew he had messed up.

XXXXXXXXXX

Ben Solo stood before the entrance to the grounds of his mother's old estate overlooking the elegant metropolis of Hanna City from afar. Said entrance was a bridge, both physical and figurative, and the length of it was nothing less than daunting.

Never in the last seven years did he think he would stand in this spot. It astounded him that he was here. He had almost forgotten just how grand his old home was. It was probably – correction: _definitely_ – the most expensive property on the face of the planet. His mother accepted nothing less than the very best. Yet, this place still felt like home.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

He turned to find a dark-skinned woman staring admiringly at the estate in the distance.

"I suppose, yes," he agreed after a long pause. This woman, she appeared to be in her middle ages. He knew nothing about her, but his curiosity begged him to ask, "Who are you?"

"Sienna," she gave, giving him a friendly smile. She then looked back to the estate. "This used to be Leia Organa's home, you know."

"I know," Ben replied. He definitely knew. Now, he took note of the complete lack of activity at the estate. It felt strange, as he remembered his mother to be anything _but_ inactive. "No one lives here anymore?"

"No," she shook her head. "Not for the last seven years."

Seven years? Did that mean she left it after he turned to the Dark Side? He had to know. "Why not?"

"Supposedly, Leia left it after she got word she had lost her son. She was too heartbroken to stay in the place she had raised him."

So she left because of him. He just felt even worse about how much he had ruined his mother's life. Now that he had moved past the teenage rebellion phase of his life that lasted much, _much_ longer than it should have, he just felt so much regret for what his actions had wrought upon his family.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked. Sienna turned to him to hear him out. He swallowed. "If someone makes a huge mistake… does that condemn them for life?"

Sienna took a long moment to think. Eventually, she replied, "Past mistakes should not be forgotten. But I believe that everyone deserves a chance to be better."

A chance to be better… He had already had a desire to become a better man for Rey, but after witnessing her grief-driven fall, that was not necessarily the case anymore. Any attempt to be a better man for her would be lost because she just didn't care. But now, he knew what the universe asked of him: to be a better man for the sake of being a better man.

"Be safe," Sienna bid farewell. Ben nodded in reciprocation, then she left.

She had given him great words to ponder on. He decided to keep them in mind going forward.

Now, it was time for him to cross the bridge to his mother's estate. He was finally ready to cross that bridge and reconcile with his past and how it pertained to his family. He wasn't afraid anymore.

He went into autopilot when he crossed the bridge. He knew the grounds like they were the back of his hand, so it took no effort for him to arrive at the vast backyard, a place he had spent much of his youth. He headed straight for the large, elegant fountain, something he recalled using to cause mischief whenever he was happy, which was uncommon during his childhood. The voices in his head – or, rather, singular _voice,_ as he had come to discover after Exegol – tormented and pushed him to think unhappy thoughts even back then. But, whenever they deigned to remain quiet, he remembered having a lot of fun around the fountain.

In fact, he could see one such memory play itself out right now. He saw his younger self sitting just outside the fountain's low wall alongside a younger memory of his mother, one of the few times she _wasn't _at work. Even now, he could see just how much change both his mother and himself underwent. He found it hard to believe he was ever that small.

And then his younger self threw a loaf of bread at one of the ducks in the fountain. Hard.

"_Ha!_" his younger self went in triumph when the throw connected.

"_Ben!_" his mother immediately chastised him. "_Why would you do that?_"

Present Ben recognized that there was no anger in Leia when she asked that. Rather, bafflement. She just wanted to understand why he had done it.

Younger Ben did not see it that way. Instead, he heard the voice in his head croon, "**_Do not feel ashamed, my boy._**"

"_Um…_" young Ben awkwardly went as he tried to think of something. He was at odds with who to listen to: the voice in his head, or his own desire to make his mother happy.

He could not decide between the two before a larger duck snapped at his finger, and bit him.

"_OW!_" he cried, shaking his hand. He then pointed at said duck with his other hand. "_It bit me!_"

"_Yeah, well you had it coming,_" his mother remarked after seeing it wasn't a serious injury. "_You attacked his mate._"

That caught young Ben's interest. It made him forget about the sharp prickling pain in his finger for a moment. "_What do you mean, mom?_"

"_That big duck loves the smaller one,_" his mother explained. "_He will do anything to protect her._"

That was fascinating to him at the time. He never had any experiences with such an act of pure selflessness.

"**_He demonstrates weakness,_**" he heard the voice in his head croon insidiously. "**_He is vulnerable to her. Should she desire, she could kill him without him even suspecting the betrayal._**"

It was a point that young Ben was concerned with. What if someone he cared about – someone he _trusted_ – betrayed him like that? He didn't want that to happen, but it was hard to predict something like that.

He looked to his mother. "_Well, what if she tried to kill him? Would he still protect her then?_"

Leia looked baffled that her son was asking such a question. Where did these thoughts come from? It concerned her, but she answered honestly. "_Yes, he would. Because it doesn't matter what they do to you. You'd still do anything for someone you love that much._" She then grew a mischievous smile. "_Like you, my little troublemaker!_"

Leia began to tickle young Ben, and both peeled with infectious laughter. They both got wet from piling into the fountain together, but it didn't matter. They were just too happy to be bothered by that.

Ben wiped a tear from his eye as the memory faded. As much as he had hurt his mother by making it his mission to destroy the Resistance, he still loved her deeply. Now that he had opened up his heart to her love once more, he remembered exactly why he could never bring himself to kill her. She was just… _mom._ Killing her would've been like cutting out his heart.

And now, he fully understood what his mother meant by her words. He had Rey now, someone he would go to the far reaches of the galaxy for. And, with her descent into darkness, he didn't doubt that she was very dangerous now.

It made him wonder. Was this what Rey had felt like when he was with the First Order? Did she feel this conflicted about being in love with a monster? He could only hope that Rey hadn't become a monster like him.

All of a sudden, he felt a wave of dread shudder through him. He looked up instinctively, away from the sunset towards the darker part of the sky.

Then, he saw it. The unmistakable silhouette of a Star Destroyer emerging from hyperspace just outside of atmosphere.

XXXXXXXXXX

Aboard the _Mantis_ in the pilot's seat, Cal felt a wave of dread shudder through him. The Force was screaming out in warning.

The scanners were going off with something they just detected. He looked over to inspect.

"What the hell…" he muttered in disbelief when he saw the ship reported: a _Xyston_-class Star Destroyer. "I thought you were all gone…"

He looked out the cockpit glass in the direction Ben went off, towards Hanna City. He held up a hand to shield his eyes from the bright sunset.

"Ben," he went in realization.

If he didn't pick him up, then Ben would be killed. Cal still held animosity for him. It would be so easy to just leave him behind and save himself and Merrin.

But he already knew that Merrin would kill him in the most literal sense if he ever did such a thing. Plus, even he had to admit that nobody deserved to be left to die.

"Kriff it," he sighed. Then, louder, he called out, "Merrin, hold onto something!"

He then started the ship and immediately took off.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Captain, Chandrila is in range," Lieutenant Lenwith informed aboard the bridge of the _Derriphan._

Captain Sabrond could see the prestigious green-blue planet herself. It was the world Senator Mothma had once represented, and thanks to her, it became a planet of rebellion, and a thorn in the Empire's side.

Her former Emperor had put it on the list for planets targeted for destruction by the Death Star II decades ago, but the Rebellion's miraculous victory over Endor put a halt to that. Now, though, her Empress would succeed where her grandfather had failed.

It did not trouble the Captain to give the order to destroy an entire planet and wipe out its entire population. She had done it before with Kijimi.

And she gave that same order now.

"Fire."

XXXXXXXXXX

As she made her way around Hanna City, Sienna looked up to see the most peculiar thing. There was a red light that began to grow brighter in the darker sectors of the sky.

But something looked off. She squinted, then immediately her eyes widened in fear.

That was a Star Destroyer. And the light continued to get even brighter.

No… _closer._

Then, a massive blast crashed into the earth, and she knew no more.

XXXXXXXXXX

Ben could see from the estate the utter annihilation of Hanna City. It only took one massive blow, and the weapon responsible continued firing, its red beam of destruction pummeling the planet into submission. The tidal wave of earth rippled outward from the point of impact, spreading as the surface of the planet crumbled before his very eyes.

He ran the other way, his mind filled with the certainty that he was going to die here, alongside his home world, reduced to nothing but ashes floating through space. And what good did it do to think differently? Nobody had ever come back for him before besides Rey. And there was no chance in all the Corellian hells that she was coming back for him now.

Just as he began to run for the bridge, the bridge collapsed. He didn't even feel despair at that. More annoyance, because_ of course_ his luck would result in this. When had he ever had any good fortune in his life? He was cursed from the moment he was born.

But then he heard engines approach. It was the _Mantis,_ flying towards him.

Then, he took greater notice, and even felt deeply appreciative, when it stopped close enough to him and dropped its ramp. The distance was too far for anyone without the Force to make that jump, but Ben could make it.

Calling upon his connection to it, he used the Force to jump high into the air, up onto the ramp. He nearly lost his balance when a second blast cracked into the planet, but he made his way back onto the ship with no issues beyond that.

"Get us out of here!" he called towards the cockpit, leaning on a handle on the side of the ship as he panted heavily.

"Anywhere specific?" came Cal's voice as he retracted the ramp from the pilot's seat. Panicked trills from BD-1 chastise him for even bothering to think of a destination at all at a time like this.

"Anywhere but here!" Ben answered.

Time was a luxury they did not have. Especially when the tidal wave of earth was nearly upon them, and blocking any escape towards the west, the direction of the sunset.

So Cal flew east instead, and decided to gamble a little bit. Normally he wouldn't even think of doing this maneuver, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

He reached up and activated the hyperdrive. Though still inside the rapidly collapsing atmosphere of Chandrila, the _Mantis_ shot away into hyperspace.

XXXXXXXXXX

Captain Sabrond watched stone-faced as Chandrila collapsed in on itself and became nothing more than scattered ashes. There was not a hint of remorse or regret for the dense population she had just exterminated with nothing more than a single spoken word. Rebel scum deserved no sympathy.

"Captain, it appears a small luxury yacht from the planet has just jumped into hyperspace," Lieutenant Lenwith informed her.

"Let it go," she commanded, waving the concern off. "It is no threat." She then turned towards the pit. "Get me a line to our Empress."

Her comms officer nodded. Within seconds, a giant blue hologram glowed throughout the bridge.

Captain Sabrond kneeled, her first disrespectful encounter firmly in mind as she bowed her head submissively.

"_Captain Sabrond,_" she heard her Empress' slithery whisper. "_What news do you report?_"

"My Empress, your will has been done. Chandrila has been destroyed," the Captain reported.

Her Empress' voice seemed to drip in poisoned honey at the news. "_Good. Good,_" she crooned, the satisfaction evident. "_You did well._"

She felt pride at her Empress' praise. Looking up at her, she saw her Empress' face looming over her own, but now she felt honored to be under her command. She was trained all her life to serve the Empire, and now she would use every extent of it to serve her Empress and carry out her will.

"_Come to Coruscant,_" Rey barked out her command. "_Remain in orbit and await further orders._"

With that, the hologram of Rey faded. After Captain Sabrond stood back up, she looked to her Lieutenant.

"Set course for Coruscant."

Lieutenant Lenwith nodded and proceeded to do just that.

The Star Destroyer's crew worked together like a well-oiled machine. In almost no time at all, the _Derriphan_ shot away into hyperspace.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**There's chapter ten! In this, Ben has a strange interaction with Rey's former lightsaber, Merrin and Cal have an argument, Ben has an eye-opening chat with a stranger, he relives a past memory, the Derriphan destroys Chandrila, and Ben, Cal, and Merrin (and BD-1) narrowly escape with their lives.**_

_**Sienna actually is a canon character. She's the daughter of Ostar and Mirienna, who have a myriad of Force Echoes pertaining to them on Zeffo in Jedi: Fallen Order. You even meet Mirienna on Kashyyyk. If you talk to her enough, she eventually says that her daughter made it to Chandrila to be with Mirienna's father. At the time, she was a baby, so around the sequel era she'd be in her middle ages.**_

_**If anyone's an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan, then Ben's memory might seem a little familiar to you. I was very inspired by the flashback of Zuko and his mother feeding the turtle ducks. I thought it was so appropriate, especially considering just how similar Ben and Zuko are. Zuko has the very best redemption arc out of all redemption arcs, and I feel Ben could've had that as well, had anyone besides Chris Terrio and Colin Trevorrow written Episode IX.**_

_**Speaking of, that's the ultimate reason why I think the Duel of the Fates script is worse than TROS. It's pretty hard to top TROS when it comes to how terribly a film can spit on TLJ's development and brilliance, but Duel of the Fates somehow manages to be even worse. It's worse thanks in large part to how it treats Kylo Ren. In that script, he became the ultimate villain and totally irredeemable. But because of TLJ, we know he's not really like that. And let's also remember how they went even farther down the path of trying to make Rey be another Luke in that script. As if TROS didn't do that enough in its own right.**_

_**Ha… I don't think I'll ever be able to stop ranting about Episode IX. Just HOW do you screw up this epically?**_

_**Well on that bombshell, I hope you enjoyed. Give this a favorite and follow, and don't be shy to let me know your thoughts in a review!**_


	11. Chapter 11

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Eleven**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

Ben suffered from a severe case of shellshock, literally and mentally.

For one, the extreme caliber weapon special to _Xyston_-class Star Destroyers was deafening to the ears. Even now, after escaping it, the sound of it still rang in his ears.

But, perhaps more so, he was shellshocked mentally due to a discovery he had come to make.

He remembered Emperor Palpatine had promised him control over the Sith fleet if he killed Rey. But, because he never did that, that meant the fleet was still under his control. He was dead now, so someone else had to be commanding whatever remained of it now, because the fleet had too much discipline among its ranks to go rogue.

As far as he knew, there was only one person who held any claim to the fleet: Rey.

When he saw Rey's face on Exegol after he reached her through their Bond, he could tell that the Emperor had made her the same offer he had been given. He had felt despair and desperation from her, and he connected it to the safety of her friends. He knew her well enough to know that she would've done anything if it meant her friends remained safe, and his past experience with the Emperor told him he would exploit that fear of hers.

And now, Rey had finally caved to her own darkness. It had to be her in command of that ship. There was no one else he knew who the Sith Eternal would submit to.

He sat on this, and was only snapped out of his thoughts when he noticed Merrin started looking feverish. Cal helped her take a seat on the couch in the lounge, but quickly she started twitching erratically, as if she was suffering from something. She shut her eyes as if in pain.

"What's going on?" Ben asked. He held a little panic as he had no idea what was happening, but tried not to show it.

Cal was about to answer when Merrin stilled all of a sudden and her features calmed. Then, her eyes opened.

They glowed a brilliant, magical green.

Ben felt his own gaze locked with hers, and he couldn't break out of it. Then, she spoke, with a voice that echoed with sheer mystic power, much more than usual. It sounded like it came from all sides.

"_Svet rannim utrom_"  
_Early morning light_

It took him a moment to run the Dathomirian through his brain and convert it to Basic, but it eventually clicked, though even he had to admit it was only a rough translation. Dathomirian was on the farthest end of the humanoid language spectrum from Basic and was notoriously difficult to learn.

He was given a vision also. First, he saw the rise of the sun.

"_Svet zemlya i ten'_"  
_Light, earth and shadow_

Then, he saw the sunlight coming down through holes in a downed ship. Though it was filled with sand blown in by winds, he recognized it as the interior of an _Imperial II_-class Star Destroyer.

He then noticed a figure emerge from the dark shadows not lit by the sunlight. When he saw who it was, it all made sense.

It was Rey, fully wrapped up in protection from the sands of Jakku. This was one of the many memories he had seen in her head as a result of the Bond. She was forged by the environment she lived in for the majority of her life, and somehow through that she managed to remain optimistic.

"_Ot strakha drozhat_"  
_Trembling with fear_

Next, he saw Rey in a dark room, distinctly afraid, to the point she was shivering. Ben was familiar with this side of her. Rey was surprisingly afraid a lot. But she had this childlike stubbornness to her. Though she tried to hide it, it was impossible to deny how she trembled with fear.

Her fear came as a result of, again, the environment she grew up in. She was always living in fear of what may come the next day, and feared what may happen if her family never came back for her.

"_Chort gromko dyshit_"  
_The devil breathes loudly_

Then, his perspective flipped around, and he saw Rey again. But, unlike the white-clad innocent Rey he knew before, this time, he saw her clad in all black, with her red saber. The image of pure sin.

This was what Rey was so scared of in the Death Star wreckage. This Rey he was looking at was darkness incarnate. She was confident in her position, and was this dreadful presence that seemed so unstoppable. Like a devil bearing down upon its next victim.

In the Jedi texts he had read during his stay at Luke's academy, he saw one common phrase in many of them: 'Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.' As he saw Rey now, she had fulfilled the first of those, maybe even the second.

"_Smert' khodit tayno_"  
_Death walks secretly_

He then saw Rey again, but this time in someone's darkened quarters, lit up only by the blood red light of her lightsaber. With no hesitation, she thrust her hand out in a gesture he recognized as her way of unleashing a lightning strike.

When he looked over to the recipient of said strike, he immediately felt sick. Even though he knew of his death, it still hurt even worse to watch it play out.

It was Uncle Lando.

Rey had murdered him, without even a second of hesitation. And absolutely nobody knew about it. She had murdered him in secret, to usurp his place of power and take it for herself.

"_A detsko spit mir_"  
_A childish serenity_

Next, he saw Rey again, but this time clad in the white outfit she had been in when the Emperor had returned. She was staring out at the Tatooine double sunset. She was a picture of innocence.

It was ironic, then, that this serenity was nothing but a lie she told to herself to keep from cracking. But, then again, Ben thought perhaps it wasn't that surprising. After all, this was the same girl who lived in denial of the truth of her parents for most of her life. She was the absolute queen of denial.

Ben thought it was noble of her to retain such optimism despite everything that had happened to her. But, like with him when he lied to himself that Ben Solo was dead, she couldn't lie to herself forever. Eventually, the truth broke free. And he could see it in her face that she knew it too, but still refused to acknowledge it.

"_Ot krovi P'yanny_"  
_Drunk from blood_

Then, he was brought to the moment he himself had witnessed: when Rey killed the scrapper who stole her droid. There was zero conflict in her at that decision. After what happened with her droid, she was out for blood.

Blood may have been red, but red was also the color of passion. In that regard, Ben thought it fit for Rey. She was someone who loved strongly. But when that love was snatched from her, she would react to it just as strongly.

"_Vdrug voyet kto-to_"  
_Suddenly someone howls_

That decision she made with the scrapper had awakened something within Rey, and Ben knew exactly what it was, having once been there himself.

It had awakened a monster.

He was shown Rey massacring the spaceport of Mos Eisley. In that regard, when seeing her slaughter innocents like they were fields to be culled, she was a monster of the worst kind: one who had forsaken everything she stood for.

Just like he once had.

"_Pesn' kak dym k nebu_"  
_A song like smoke to the sky_

Then, the destruction of Chandrila – his home world – flashed before him. The image of Hanna City being blown sky high would forever remain etched in his mind.

He remembered the stories his mother told of the war against the Empire. It started in full once the Empire destroyed Alderaan. After that massacre, all that still believed in the Republic cried for war.

He felt the same thing was going to happen today. He couldn't explain why, though. It was just a feeling.

"_Pesn' voyny vstayot_"  
_The song of war rises_

Next, he was shown a captain of one of the Final Order's ships. A woman, by the looks of it.

Then, the knowledge suddenly came to him. This was Captain Chesille Sabrond, the captain of the _Derriphan,_ the only ship of the Sith fleet to have made it out of Exegol.

All those specifics he didn't really care to know, though it did help with filling in the gaps. All that he cared to know about her was that she was ruthlessly devoted to her cause. He knew that the Final Order was trained to obey its Emperor's orders to the letter without hesitation.

They were fanatical in their devotion to their leader. He could tell by the way the captain roused the morale of her troops. She reminded him of Hux and Pryde in a way with how she was young and cunning yet ruthlessly devoted to a cause. The key difference was that loyalty wasn't an issue for her, and her youth made that loyalty even stronger. She was loyal to her Empress to the very end.

That made her even more dangerous than Hux and Pryde could've ever been, especially considering the total lack of infighting aboard the ship. He saw there was nothing but pure fanatical following in her gaze as she proudly and pridefully stuck her right arm up ahead of her, palm facing down and straight, in that abhorrent fascist salute.

"_I gromche zvuchit_"  
_And sounds louder_

His perspective flipped, and he witnessed a mass of red, armored arms return that same fascist salute in one of the hangar bays.

It was like watching a sea of blood boil and react violently, ready to burn down everything in its path. Even with what little he'd seen of them, he knew Sith troopers were some of the most elite troopers to ever plague the galaxy. They were hardened, specialized troops meant for quick, _Blitzkrieg_ style warfare, with the Sith jet troopers being the most elite of the entire corps thanks to their incredible mobility with their jetpacks. The entire Sith trooper corps were trained to achieve nothing less than perfection.

And, what's more, they had perhaps the greatest of all weapons on their side: high morale.

Any self-respecting leader of a military force knew that morale was the greatest weapon one could wield. Ben knew that, and practiced it himself with his own troops. He always led them in battle. And they obeyed him without question. Not necessarily because they feared him – though they did still fear him anyway – but more because he had earned their respect.

That never applied with the Sith troopers, though. They only answered to Palpatine. _Empress_ Palpatine, now. And they were sworn to defend the Empire until their last breath.

"_U chorta litsa_"  
_In the face of a person_

Ben tripped up mentally when he was shown himself. It wasn't what he was expecting.

Also, the Dathomirian coursing through his brain was starting to get harder to translate. He really thought about perhaps practicing more while Merrin was here.

"_I tela netu_"  
_And there is no body_

It got stranger when he started seeing his own facsimile go through each phase of his life. He saw himself when he was just a boy. Then, that boy grew to be a teenager, and then a young man in Luke's academy. Then, he grew up to be this mentally tortured man being crushed spiritually by the Dark Side. A man with no faith in the Light Side.

"_A tol'ko vera_"  
_But only faith_

Faith… now that he thought about it, that was the case. He never truly lost faith. Rather, it had been buried for so long, because he was afraid to have faith in the thing that had previously burned him.

This Dathomirian was getting trickier by the minute. His mind was struggling to keep up.

"_V yego bor'be_"  
_In his struggle_

Hmm… 'In a person's face, there is no body, but only faith in his struggle?' He thought that was about right. It sounded like something that would describe a soldier. If a soldier believed in what they were fighting for, they were much more likely to succeed and achieve victory.

It ironically described himself very well, too. That was further supported when his vision next showed him climbing back up out of the pit the Emperor had thrown him down. He only managed to climb out because he had put his faith into his love for Rey. She meant _everything_ to him. If he had to struggle and climb out of a thousand pits for her, then he would do so without hesitation.

He was kind of used to going farther than he thought he would, especially for her. His whole life had been like that: one great struggle to the next. This time was no different.

"_Ot moikh glaz ne_"  
_From my eyes not_

Something else was happening now. It felt distinctly light, though. And his soul felt equally lighter now.

Force, this damn Dathomirian was getting tough to translate…

"_Boysya dozhdey, syn moy_"  
_Afraid of rain, my son_

… Okay, he thought he got the gist of it now. 'From my eyes not afraid of rain, my son.' The rough gist, but the gist nonetheless.

Simultaneously, his vision showed him all of the trials he had went through. From having to prove himself to the other students in Luke's academy, to having to make it into the Knights of Ren, to all the suffering he had endured at Snoke's hand.

He had pushed through all of it. All that could've rained down on him, he had already faced. There was nothing left for him to be afraid of.

Not even the thought of what Rey might've become in his absence. Though he dreaded that encounter, he did not let that fear drive him.

"_Ya gorzhus' toboy_"  
_I'm proud of you_

Next, he saw his family. Anakin, Luke, and Leia, as they were on Tatooine.

He felt it. This was from them. Who else would've acknowledged him as their son? And now, to feel that they were proud of him?

Well, that was all he ever really wanted.

Anakin had that little smirk of confidence as he nodded at him, eyes twinkling with pride. Luke actually cracked a small smile at him. When was the last time he ever saw that? And Leia… his mother… she had always loved him, and even now, in death, she still showed him that.

This was crazy to him. For the longest time, his family was a mess. He just couldn't forget everything that had happened between them. But now… now, perhaps he could forgive them.

"_Da srazaysya kak lev_"  
_Yes, fight like a lion_

Then, he saw darkness. The only sources of light were four lightsaber blades. Two of them were blood red; crackling and unstable, and attached together; a literal double-edged sword. The other two were a brilliant blue; steady and solid, and free from one another; two independent lightsabers working together.

All he could see were the blades themselves and the sparks that flew off of them whenever they connected. It was a fierce fight, both combatants giving it their all. The red lightsaber was wielded by a small woman who seemed simultaneously constrained and consumed by darkness. The weapon was longer than she was tall, and was wielded in a slippery way, like a serpent wielded it. The blue ones, though, were wielded by a large, brutish yet calculative man. He fought in such a way that suited his strength, like a large tooka fighting to defend his mate.

The haze he was under then lifted, and he found himself leaning over the coffee table, completely out of it.

He saw Merrin fall back against the back of the couch, unconscious.

"Is she alright?" he asked Cal, who was there by her side checking on her. Though he had much on his mind, he wanted to know if she was okay first.

"Yeah," the old Jedi nodded. The lack of panic he showed reassured him. "She just needs some rest. She'll wake up soon."

"Right," he nodded, relieved. Then, his analytical mind roused with curiosity. "What was that, anyway?"

Cal understood he meant what happened with Merrin. "She had this special drink just after you left," he remarked as he gently laid her down on the couch. "A blend of magick she calls the Seer's Potion. After drinking it, she can tell you things and show you things, but she's not herself during that. It's like…" Cal paused, figuring out how to describe it. "… something else takes over her."

Ben definitely felt the same way. Though exactly what that _something else_ was, he didn't quite know. But he had his suspicions.

"… Yeah." He nodded as he stood up. He quickly glanced towards the back of the ship. Then, he said, "I'm, uh… going to the back. Need to meditate."

The older Jedi understood and let him go without any further words. Before heading to the back, Ben took a moment to look at Merrin. He hoped to the Force she would be okay. He noticed Cal's care for her. That reassured him more than nothing, because he could see how much he loved her. It reminded him of how much he loved Rey. He knew without question he'd do the same for her.

As he walked back, his thoughts drifted towards what Merrin had just done to him. He could feel that she wasn't the one who said everything to him. Though the words had come out of her mouth, they had also come from all around them. Something else had taken complete control of her for that moment. He wondered… she had drunk this Seer's Potion, and she had shown him things even he didn't know about. Was it the Force itself showing him all this, via Merrin?

He started to think so. Regardless, he had been shown many things that he had to think about.

And talk about.

As he kneeled, closed his eyes and settled into meditation, he called upon the one person he wanted to talk to about everything.

"Hello, Ben."

He opened up his eyes again to see the woman his grandfather had told him about. The woman he saw as a sister. "Ahsoka," he breathed.

The Force ghost of Ahsoka Tano was there before him, on her knees just like him. She was an old woman when she became one with the Force, even older than Merrin was presently. Ahsoka had to be in her seventies by the time she passed on. That much was obvious when looking at her. Her montrals were very long. It was the mark of an elder Togruta. She also had age lines across her face betraying her old age.

But one thing that remained the same was how compassionate and gentle she felt. Even only seconds after seeing her again, Ben felt so at ease around her.

She smiled at the man who was practically her great-nephew, her face soft yet strong. "It's good to see you again."

Ben looked down for a minute, a little hesitant. "Even after…?"

"Yes. Even after you killed me," Ahsoka bluntly answered his question before he even finished, the corners of her eyes crinkling in humor.

That was something Ben found strange. Yes, he _had_ killed her, but it was far more complicated than just that. And it was curious that Ahsoka seemed to treat it as if it was a joke. She didn't even care that he had been the one to end her life. He didn't know what to think about that.

"Why are you just laughing like it was nothing?" he asked, almost offended that she didn't even seem to hate him in the least bit for it. "I _killed_ you. You should be mad at me."

Ahsoka took in his conflicted features. Then, she answered patiently, "Because I asked you to."

Ben remembered something like that being the case. He still didn't understand, though. Why would she ask for death?

"Do you remember when you found me?" He nodded. "I was a wreck then, and in no shape to fight you."

"So _why?_" Ben pressed, desperate for an answer. "I didn't _want_ to."

Ahsoka sighed in sadness, her expressive eyes showing how much she herself was hurting. "I know, and I'm sorry for forcing you to make that choice. But I had my reasons, if you'll listen."

He still didn't understand the thought process of the woman who was practically his great-aunt. But he wanted to learn, so he gestured her to continue.

"The reason I told myself the most is that I thought I deserved it." Ben wanted to interrupt and say that wasn't so, but Ahsoka stopped him with a hand. "No, you can't change my mind on that. I believed I deserved death because both my generation as well as that of your parents screwed up. We screwed up tremendously. My generation plunged the galaxy into war first, because we were too prideful to study the enemy that hid themselves right under our noses, and we paid dearly for it. With our lives.

"And then the next generation made the same mistake: they were too prideful to realize when something was troubling you and they paid dearly for it."

Ben thought he understood a little, but he still didn't get it fully. "I don't get why you think you're to blame. There was no way you could've stopped any of-"

"But that's just it," Ahsoka interrupted. She didn't raise her voice at all, but there was a greater intensity to it than before. "I _could've_ stopped all this. Do you know why you never saw much of me when you were at your uncle's academy?"

Ben shook his head no.

"It was because Luke and I disagreed with each other strongly on bringing back the Jedi Order. He wanted to bring back the Jedi Order as it used to be, just like how his sister desired to reinstate the Republic just as it used to be."

"And you thought differently," Ben surmised.

"Yes, I did. As someone who grew up under that same order, I knew I couldn't support that. The Jedi Order was flawed, tremendously so. It was those flaws that led to its ultimate destruction. I did not want to contribute to history repeating itself."

Her shoulders dropped. "But," she continued, depressed, "maybe I should've joined him. Then, I could've helped out those who were troubled find another path."

She gave him a significant look. He recognized that she meant him. "What's done is done, but it means a lot to know you care."

She smiled softly in thanks, before growing regretful once more. "But even then, I could've stopped so much more. I could've stopped the Empire from rising and destroying the galaxy, but my own faith got in the way."

Upon his curious gaze, she then launched into a story, her eyes growing reminiscent. "It was a long time ago, at the very end of the Clone Wars during the Siege of Mandalore. Though I was no longer a Jedi, I decided to help the Republic capture the renegade Sith Lord Maul."

The name was familiar to Ben. The former Darth Maul was among many past Force-wielders he had studied.

"I remember Maul and I had many talks with each other. And he told me many things. Among them were that the Republic wasn't _going to_ fall, but had _already_ fallen. Then, only hours later, the Republic's clone troopers turned against me. He was right about that.

"He told me about Darth Sidious…"

Ben nearly shivered at the name, and he noticed Ahsoka did too. She must've encountered him at some point in her life for her to react to his name that way.

"… That _he_ would be the controlling interest in the galaxy. And he didn't lie about that."

Ahsoka seemed to struggle emotionally for a moment, but eventually she continued, though obviously compromised.

"Then, he made me an offer: join him, and together we could stop Sidious as well as his new apprentice. It sounded like the right thing to do, but I was still wary of trusting Maul, as I had found out he had a vision of Anakin."

Hearing Ahsoka talk about her confrontation with Maul, Ben was distinctly reminded of his own proposal to Rey in the _Supremacy's_ throne room. He thought the similarities were ironic.

"I did agree to join him, though, but only if he answered my question of what he wanted with Anakin."

She looked down for a moment, trying to compose herself. "He told me about Sidious' plans for Anakin. How he was the key to everything. How he was grooming him to be his next apprentice, and had been doing so for a long time. And you know what I did?"

Ben carefully shook his head no.

"I told him he lied," she laughed bitterly. "That I knew Anakin and that he would never do such a thing." She shook her head in shame. "Then I run into him again fifteen years later and also run into Darth Vader. Yet again, he didn't lie."

He could tell she was trying really hard to not shed tears.

"Even now, I still wonder if I should've joined him. Because when I found out who Anakin had become, I was destroyed by it. The fact that Maul was right about him was just insult to injury, and the knowledge that I could've stopped that from happening was just more salt in an overly aggravated wound."

She took a moment to rub her eyes and compose herself. Then, she continued, with a little laugh in her voice. "I could've sworn I got over all this decades ago. But here I am."

"I understand," Ben sympathized. "The past will always be there with you. You can never truly escape it. All you can do is accept it and move on."

Ahsoka was a little stunned at his words, but after a second a proud smile stretched her face. Her great-nephew had gotten so _wise__. _She could only chalk that up to all his life experiences. Though he had lived a hellish existence, it had taught him so much that he never would've learned as a Jedi. His lengthy, dramatic past had made him who he is today.

"Well said," she praised. "I did have another reason for asking you to kill me. This one was far more selfish of me, though, but I think you'd understand." She raised both of her eyebrow markings at him, in a knowing look.

"Do you remember when the Senate was destroyed by the First Order?"

Ben nodded yes. He remembered that day with clarity. At the time, he had thought there was no place for the New Republic Senate in the galaxy – mostly because of his own feelings of resentment towards his mother for always choosing her work over him – but he thought destroying it with Starkiller Base was overkill. So where was she going with this?

"Well, one of the Senators lost was very close to me. Someone I loved dearly, and whom I couldn't live without." Again, the Togruta raised both eyebrow markings knowingly.

Ben understood that she knew he knew what it was like to lose someone like that, even if for him it was only temporary. "Who was he?" he asked, genuinely curious, especially because he never knew her as the type of person to settle down. "Your…?"

The befuddlement on Ben's face as he tried to find the right word to use while also trying to avoid any offense made Ahsoka laugh. He was such a sweet boy. "He was my mate – that's my species' equivalent to a spouse – and his name was Lux."

"Ah…" Ben went in enlightenment.

"He was just the greatest," Ahsoka began to wax poetic, losing herself in memories long past of that Separatist-turned-rebel that she always got butterflies over. "We had a rough start, especially when he decided to team up with this terrorist group just for the sake of revenge, but eventually we really clicked.

"He taught me a valuable lesson when we first met: that people are far more complicated than just their loyalties suggest. Lux may have been a Separatist, but I just knew that I never would've been able to kill him if we had crossed paths on a battlefield.

"I wouldn't have had the life I lived if it wasn't for him. After my last encounter with Anakin – when I found out for sure that he was Darth Vader – I was presumed dead. I couldn't return to the Rebellion, otherwise I would just paint a huge target on their backs. And the only place I could think of going to was to Lux. He was there for me in my darkest moments, and, though it wasn't perfectly smooth sailing in the least, I wouldn't change anything. Especially because, if it weren't for those moments where we were honest with each other even if it hurt, we never would've solidified our relationship as much as we did.

"It was dangerous for me to even be there because his planet was under the Empire's rule. You understand that it was a tediously fearful affair trying to stay alive when an entire galaxy wanted my kind dead. And I had to purposely restrain my abilities to avoid drawing the attention of the Inquisition. It worked, but I knew that was no way to live. Though we hurt each other a lot whenever we argued – which was pretty often – it only hurt because we both loved each other so strongly."

She smiled and shook her head, laughing softly. "Then I found out I was pregnant. Soon, we were going to have a child together, and that changed things significantly between us. Now that so much more was at stake, something had to give. We couldn't afford to be stubborn with each other anymore and have all these petty fights. We had to come to resolutions, and ultimately we did the right thing and let go of our immaturity. When our son was born, and as he started showing his Force-sensitivity, that's when we knew, in order for him to grow up safe, that we had to do something and drive the Empire from the planet."

"And you did," Ben assumed.

The Togruta nodded modestly, though it was still easy to see she held a bit of pride in that. "Yes. We did. But do you know why we could?"

He didn't exactly. And he was a little embarrassed to admit so. "No. Why?"

"Because we loved our son so much that we'd do anything for him," Ahsoka answered. Then, she grinned teasingly. "You of all people should know by now, Ben, that love is the most powerful motivator in the galaxy." She raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. "Or are you not so madly in love with Rey Palpatine that you'd give your own life for her?"

"_Okay,_ I get it." Ben's cheeks and ears flamed red. Force, the only thing more embarrassing than this would be if his mother was here.

The Togruta cackled at her great-nephew's expense. It had been so long since she was able to tease someone about their love life, the last one being her own son.

Then, her face fell into sympathy. "You realize you'll have to face her, right?" she gently prodded.

"I know," Ben acknowledged, though not enthusiastically. He really wasn't looking forward to fighting Rey again. He dreaded it.

"Just remember that you know her better than anyone else. A way will show itself."

"I don't want to hurt her!" Ben protested. That was the very last thing he wanted.

Ahsoka sighed. "I understand your reluctance, Ben, but sometimes, you _have_ to hurt the ones you love in order to set them straight. And remember, if you hurt her, you _can_ heal her. That's what loving someone is all about: healing them when they're hurt."

The memory of Rey healing him on the Death Star ruins flashed in his head. Yes, he understood. She had hurt him, but she healed him as well. All because of love.

"You're right." Ben was truly thankful for Ahsoka's wisdom now. He had been afraid that he would be forced to strike Rey down, but Ahsoka had shown him that there could be another way. "It won't be easy, though."

"Nothing worth doing ever is," Ahsoka replied sagely. "But there are people who can help you. I imagine you'll need it."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Many people, though you'll find that out for yourself. But there is one person specifically who I know will be willing to help."

She looked into his eyes and seemed to smirk just the smallest bit, as if she knew something he didn't.

"He became the Senator for Onderon last year. He's the successor of Lux Bonteri."

She purposely used Lux's full name this time, because she knew that Ben knew that name.

As she predicted, Ben immediately recognized the Bonteri name. Because he had a past encounter with a man by that name: Mika Bonteri.

"I'm not sure he'd be too accepting of the man who tried to conquer his planet," he finally responded a tad pessimistically.

"I know my son," Ahsoka countered optimistically. "Mika doesn't hold grudges. Just be yourself. Be the man you were always meant to be, and your past mistakes won't be held against you. No one will care because they'll know you're not that person anymore."

To hear Ahsoka say that made Ben feel much better and more secure in possibly making allies out of former enemies.

"I'm sure you already know, but you can trust my in-laws to help you, as well."

He furrowed his eyebrows. "Your in-laws?"

Ahsoka smiled. "Cal Kestis and Nightsister Merrin. My son married their eldest daughter. I thought it was strange at first, considering she's a lot older than him."

"I don't think it's strange at all," Ben interjected on her tangent, subtly pointing out the ten-year age difference between him and Rey. He left it unsaid, though, that he knew exactly who she was talking about. In the First Order's attempt to conquer Onderon, he had run into both her son, another weird _green-haired_ Jedi he was close with, and two red-headed Nightsisters who could only have come from Cal and Merrin.

"Yeah, I've changed my tune since then. I think it's sweet."

"Well, back to your in-laws," Ben steered the conversation back. "I don't mean to brag, but I think they like me enough."

"It seems they do," Ahsoka agreed, a grin stretching her face. "You're in good hands, Ben." She straightened up. "Now, Anakin told me you were given his and Leia's lightsabers. I have a little bit of advice for you on wielding dual lightsabers."

"Uh, I've used two lightsabers before," Ben replied, grateful but not understanding. Though he meant no offense to her, he didn't think he needed the advice. He remembered very clearly he had used two lightsabers to kill the former leader of the Knights of Ren.

"When you were driven by anger. You're not driven by that anymore," Ahsoka wisely pointed out. "With two lightsabers, you have a very strong offense, but conversely a weaker defense. You need to learn to use that fighting style to its greatest strengths and minimize its weaknesses. And you can only do that by balancing both the light and the dark within yourself; use the best of both."

Ah, now he understood. Ahsoka's wisdom knew no bounds. He felt foolish for even considering not listening to her. She was a prodigy with wielding dual lightsabers; she knew how to fight with them, and fight with them well.

But she was also very wise regarding life matters. She recognized that the Force wasn't merely being on the Light Side or the Dark Side; it was about balancing both sides within oneself. Everyone had a light and dark side; it was just that many Force-wielders in particular found it practically impossible – or just flat-out didn't want – to find balance.

And Force-wielders were so influential to the state of the galaxy that they often shaped it, whether by intent or not. Hence, the galaxy was a reflection of Force-wielders. Through that scope, it was easy to see that the galaxy had been wronged for a long, long time now, whether it was by the Jedi or by the Sith.

Now, Ben thought it was time it was set right. He nodded determined. "Got it."

Ahsoka was undeniably proud of him, and she knew for a fact that Anakin was as well.

"May the Force be with you… always," she whispered as she began to phase out.

Ben held her gaze as she disappeared back into the Force. He knew what he had to do now.

As soon as she was gone, he stood up. He reached towards that part of himself that he hadn't dared to open back up ever since being resurrected.

He reached towards the bond he had with his Dyad. That special connection he shared with Rey.

XXXXXXXXXX

On Coruscant, Rey sat perched on her throne, with her comm link out. Her comm link was blowing up with messages from various Resistance members.

"_-is just GONE! The whole planet is just-!_" came Poe's voice before Rey switched to a different message, his hologram dissipating to be replaced with another.

"_Rey, are you there? Oh, please answer! We just found out that Chandrila's-!_" She cut off Finn, switching to another.

Static interfered with the first part of this message, and there was no hologram, but she eventually discerned Kaydel's voice. "_-know what it is! It's the Derriphan! We need to destroy it immediately, before it-!_"

She cut off Kaydel's message, but this time it was because she was just given a juicy nugget of information. So they _did_ know about the _Derriphan's_ continued survival, but not that it was at her command. If she played her cards right, she could have the Resistance's unquestioned loyalty, something she could tell she was starting to lose little by little. Though Poe and Finn still believed fully in her, the same could not be said for the rest.

At that moment, however, she felt something she hadn't felt since…

The bond.

Something was reaching through it to her. It was _light,_ strong enough that she jumped to her feet and recoiled from it. She tried resisting it.

XXXXXXXXXX

Ben could feel the attempt to block him out. But it did not deter him. He continued pushing through.

XXXXXXXXXX

Rey's eyes slammed shut as she tried to resist. Whatever this was reaching through hers and Ben's shattered bond, it was so strong that it was overwhelming her. _She _was supposed to be the most powerful Force-wielder in existence now! What, or _who,_ could possibly overpower her?

XXXXXXXXXX

The resistance she was putting up was incredible. Ben knew not to take it lightly. If Rey wanted to ignore something hard enough, she would. She was the queen of denial, after all.

But now, he was determined to make her listen. He _needed_ to see her again.

XXXXXXXXXX

Rey's face grew full of dread when she tentatively felt out what was breaching her old bond with Ben. There was something _so achingly familiar_ there, a sensation she had only felt in one other person…

Then, she heard the sound around her drown out, just like it used to whenever her and Ben connected. Her eyes shot open, out of pure, dreadful fear. Because it was impossible. It couldn't be…

Standing right before her, looking straight into her soul, was Ben Solo.

He knew he would only get one shot at talking to her before she did something to slam the bond shut, so he didn't waste it. He just said what felt most right.

"I'll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise."

Rey had heard those words before, but only in dreams a long time ago. To hear them now after all these years, and to find out who had said them…

She was _terrified_ out of her mind. And she did what she always did whenever she was scared: lash out.

"_NO!_" she screamed out of raw pain and panic as two angry red blades spat to life. Before she knew it, she was lunging with her double blade towards Ben, and slashed through him, _hard._

His apparition disappeared, and Rey was left alone again. But she couldn't ignore what she had seen.

That was Ben Solo. And yet, her mind couldn't process that.

"No no no, that couldn't be him," she tried to tell herself, but her shaking fists told a different story. "I saw it myself: he's _dead._ There's _no way_ he could be back."

She tried to breathe, but it was as if all the air had been sucked out of her when she saw him.

"No, don't do this to yourself!" she admonished herself, her voice starting to crack. "Don't give into hope, Rey! It has only ever burned you!"

Tears leaked down her face. When some made their way into her mouth, she licked them away. But a sharp sensation stopped her.

She licked her lips again. There it was again, that same sharp sensation.

Oh, Force, she knew what it was. Whenever her tongue skimmed over her teeth, she could feel it: sharp points greeting her tongue.

Her teeth had all sharpened into these monster-like fangs. They were sharp enough to draw blood whenever her tongue skimmed over their points.

Because she had licked her lips, she had spread that blood. Now, her lips were painted blood red in the most literal sense.

Remembering the painting above the entrance to the throne room, she grew scared. She drew the reflective silver hilt of her lightsaber up and used it as a mirror to examine her eyes.

They were glowing gold.

She sobbed all over again. She had failed. She had become that monster in the painting, the one she had told herself she would never become. A monster was the only person who could order the destruction of a planet on a whim with no second thoughts as to the resulting loss of life.

She unsteadily stumbled out of her throne room. "They can't leave me," she whispered to herself, almost beggingly. Like she believed if she said it aloud, it would become the truth. As she wiped her lips to erase the blood from them, she continued, her voice darkened with hate. "I need to make sure they never do."

XXXXXXXXXX

Ben sat on the bunk in the back of the _Mantis,_ digesting the revelation he was just given after reopening the special connection between him and Rey.

She hadn't just become like him. She had become so much worse.

She was worse because she did not have any of the inhibitions that he had: namely, there was no conflict in her. She was entirely driven by her desire to make the galaxy into what she believed was right, and she would do it at absolutely any cost, even if it included her own well-being.

In short, she had completely lost it.

He looked over to the bag he had brought aboard the ship. Just one glance at it, and a reminder of its contents, and he knew what he had to do.

XXXXXXXXXX

When Merrin came to, the first thing she saw was the face of her Jedi, her beloved Cal, looking at her so caringly.

"… Cal?" she whispered hoarsely. Her voice felt like it had been clawed out and then stitched back in. That was normal whenever she deigned to use her Seer's Potion, but still felt very unpleasant.

"You're okay," he gently reassured her. His voice always soothed her. It felt like home. She could fall back to sleep just hearing him whisper sweet nothings to her and she wouldn't mind at all.

Then, a delicious smell hit her nostrils. "Is that…?"

Immediately after, her stomach growled.

"Steak," Cal finished for her, just as she noticed a serving of steak set out on the coffee table. He helped her sit up. "Rare, just how you like it."

She could kill for some food right now. Consuming the Seer's Potion always left her with a ravenous appetite.

As she began to dig in, she and Cal noticed Ben come out from the back. He was a lot different, though.

For one, he had changed clothes. He was now wearing a Jedi's outfit, minus the robe itself, much like Cal had once worn as a Padawan, but this one was black. It was an outfit Cal certainly recognized. Once upon a time, while he still served the Republic, Anakin Skywalker had worn that same black Jedi outfit. Yet, Ben seemed to fill it out better than he had.

For another, he had three lightsabers on his belt. On his righthand side was Anakin's, then on his left was Leia's. Behind Leia's was the yellow lightsaber.

Then, there was Ben's attitude. Both the Jedi and the Nightsister could feel there was no conflict in him anymore. There was a sense of duty in him, that he knew what needed to be done.

The last Skywalker proceeded over to the holotable. Cal left Merrin with a parting caress and followed.

"I know where she is," Ben announced as he searched through the galaxy with the holotable. He then looked to Cal. "We're going to Coruscant."

The corner of Cal's mouth turned up into a grin. "It's been a long time since I've been there," he remarked as he entered the cockpit.

Ben understood the underlying meaning. The last time Cal would've been there would've been when the Jedi Order was still around. "I hope you're ready for it, then," he replied with a little smirk of confidence before heading back to the lounge by Merrin.

"Tch. Of course I'm ready," Cal grumbled, rolling his eyes as he pulled the _Mantis_ out of hyperspace.

Only to be greeted with a nebula hosting a pack of giant manta-rays.

"Not ready for this, though," he said to himself, swiftly turning the ship around and quickly setting coordinates for Coruscant.

Loud screeches came from the beasts outside the ship just before it reentered hyperspace.

"What was that?!" came Merrin's questioning voice from down the ship.

"Nothing, dear!" He then muttered, "There's always a bigger fish."

**XXXXXXXXXX**

**_Chapter eleven, the longest one yet! Here, we get a trippy vision induced by Nightsister magick, we get Ahsoka Tano having a nice long chat with Ben, our Force Dyad connect for the first time since Tatooine, and now the Mantis crew is on its way to Coruscant!_**

**_The trippy vision was actually greatly inspired by one of my favorite pieces of original score. It's from the video game "Freedom Fighters," and it's, ironically, called "March of the Empire." The lyrics – Russian, if you're curious – served as my biggest inspiration, as they're appropriately morbid and suit the story events pretty well, but the music itself was also appropriate. The track has this way of making you feel like all hope is lost, that there's an unstoppable army marching towards you._**

**_The behavior of the Final Order's remnant was greatly inspired by Nazi Germany, with the SS in particular inspiring the Sith troopers for me. There was really no development for the Final Order in TROS, so I took my own liberties with them and went in this direction. It just makes the most sense to me to portray them this way._**

**_Let me just say that I love Ahsoka. She's just great. The only problem I had with her was that, much like Rey and many other heroines, she doesn't get to have what she wants. And you can't convince me that she didn't want Lux. I mean, the girl was so jealous during the Onderon arc in Clone Wars season five. You don't get that way over someone you're not interested in. Which is why I took it upon myself to give her what she wanted, and I actually put a surprising amount of thought into it. I crafted an entire backstory for her as it concerns this story, to the point that it could be its own story, which I've referenced during her and Ben's chat._**

**_Then, we have one moment I've been waiting so long to do: the first time Ben and Rey connect to each other since Tatooine. I felt so bad that they had to interact that way with each other, but their actions felt natural nevertheless. Reylo just has this way of giving you intense feels no matter what situations you throw them into. Big, BIG thanks to Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley for giving us those wonderful Reylo scenes._**

**_Also, if anyone gets that quote Ben said to her, you're a true Reylo. I picked it because I always felt like Ben was the one who said that to her. Or, rather, he was the one who WOULD say that to her in the future._**

**_I hope you enjoyed! If you did, give this story a favorite, follow, and leave a review! And one last question before I leave you: what's your favorite piece of Star Wars music?_**

**_Mine actually comes from TROS, surprisingly. It's one of the only good things about this movie, but I absolutely ADORE the Reylo love theme. The way Rey's and Kylo's themes are blended together is just done so beautifully that it made me want to cry when I first heard it. I'd been imagining what such a theme could sound like for so long, and when I finally heard it, I was just struck speechless. It was so much better than I could've ever imagined._**


	12. Chapter 12

_**Nothing is Ever Truly Over**_

_**Chapter Twelve**_

**XXXXXXXXXX**

"Come on, Finn! We need to hurry up!"

Finn and Rose were hightailing it to the main Senate chamber. They were running late.

That didn't really concern Finn so much, though, as he slowed down to say, "Rose, do you feel like something's wrong?"

"Of course something's wrong, Finn," Rose replied, as if it was obvious. "One of the Final Order's Star Destroyers just destroyed a densely populated planet and is still on the loose."

"Not that," he shook his head. "I just feel like this emergency meeting Rey's called…"

He couldn't quite explain it, but that part of himself that sensed Rey's well-being had gone completely dark. He couldn't tell anything about what was happening with her. It was par for the course for him to worry about Rey, but this type of worry he felt was different. It felt like the approach of something ominous and unpredictable, like a live thermal detonator. While Rey was normally pretty unpredictable, that unpredictability felt dangerous now.

"… well, I just have a bad feeling about it."

Rose looked back at him and raised an eyebrow, baffled. "You didn't feel like this before. What changed?"

Finn honestly couldn't place his finger on it. But the memory he had of seeing her again after her self-imposed exile – particularly that distinctly chilling cackle she let out after he told her of his possible Force sensitivity – was one he dwelled on heavily now, especially after recalling her cold interactions with the rest of the Resistance. His greatest guess was that his excitement over Rey returning had finally died down, and with that, he was seeing all of the problems he had previously ignored.

Namely, he was seeing that there was something really wrong with her, and that there had been ever since before Exegol. Probably even since Crait.

"I don't know. I'm just concerned about her."

"At least _somebody_ is," Rose remarked, touched by how pure Finn's care for his best friend was. "She's been driving herself into the ground with how many responsibilities she's taken over."

Even though she had her misgivings about Rey and the direction she's taken the Resistance, that didn't mean she hated her, nor did she wish to discourage Finn from doing what he did best: caring for his friends. She loved that pure heart Finn had. She was only concerned that things could possibly turn ugly in the future and that pure heart may not end up making it out alive.

With that, Rose and Finn entered their platform of choice in the Senate Chamber. They could already hear Rey's distinctly powerful voice echoing throughout the chamber.

"It pains me to reveal that we are in grave danger right now," she spoke. "Our very way of life is at risk. I have received news that the former Emperor's Final Order is not as defeated as we previously believed."

She let that hang in the air for a moment, just to underscore the threat at hand. All her words were chosen very carefully.

"The _Derriphan,_ which had been in hiding since the end of the Battle of Exegol, has at last revealed itself, and has wrought a most terrible destruction: thanks to them, the planet of Chandrila no longer exists."

An uproar rose in the chamber. Exactly as she predicted. Just like with Alderaan's destruction, the destruction of Chandrila would be the final straw, and the public would cry for war.

She patiently waited atop her podium for the wave of protest and outrage to die down. "These rogue agents now threaten the stability we've built as a galactic people. They must not be allowed to succeed. It falls upon us to defend our way of life from these oppressors, but in order to do that, I require the help of every single one of you, my friends.

"I need you to _trust me. I_ know what must be done. I only ask that you grant me the _power_ to do it."

The way the word 'power' came off her lips left a shiver throughout the air. One that even Poe felt. It made even him, historically the man always looking for a fight, pause at Rey's plea.

At first, he thought it was unfair of Zorii to stand so against Rey when she didn't even know her. But now, _he_ didn't really know Rey, either. He was starting to think his former (okay, _current_ as well) flame was onto something.

With that question firmly in mind, he spoke into his platform's microphone, "Could you elaborate on that?"

Her pair of golden eyes snapped onto him, and the look she gave made him jump back slightly in fright. She was _terrifying._

Rey, however, was quite annoyed that Poe was making her explain further. Why couldn't he just trust her and not listen to that bounty hunter lady? She was sure Zorii had turned him against her. The Poe she knew was always looking for a fight, and now he hesitated to enter one, even when she gave as great a reason as any for going to war?

Well, it was just ridiculous.

"I'm asking to be granted additional emergency powers to allow me to resolve this crisis situation," she elaborated. It was a begrudging admission, but she did well to keep that masked.

The moment she mentioned emergency powers, the entire chamber fell deathly silent. Many of the New Republic's senators as well as those operatives most faithful to the Resistance, like Poe and many who were also in the former Rebellion, knew the story of how the Empire came to be. Simply put, it all came down to Sheev Palpatine convincing his contemporaries to willingly hand him more and more power, until he acquired so much power that he essentially controlled everything. At the time, it had seemed to be the best option, as there was no other realistic option that was better. But with the benefit of hindsight, it was easy to see why it was a bad idea to give one person so much power with no checks and balances in place.

"Forgive me, Miss Rey," one of the representatives interjected, "but there are those of us who believe waging war may not be the best way to ensure galactic stability. Shouldn't our priority be to establish a stable government first?"

"Oh, I already have a plan for that. No need to worry," Rey replied, growing a smug smirk. Oh, did she ever have a plan. "But answer me this, Senator: how can we establish a stable government if there are people out there waiting to destroy it?"

Some sporadic murmuring broke out as many of the representatives quietly argued over that question. That pleased Rey, knowing that there was not a terribly strong conviction to resist her will. She had left the people in a pinch, had manipulated events so they would _have_ to cede to her demands if they wished to live.

"We establish a government by basing it in trust."

The interruption brought her out of her state of satisfaction, and it left her peeved. She immediately noticed one of the platforms move further forwards towards the center, capturing the attention of every single person in the chamber.

Her fists clenched even tighter.

"Trust that you have not earned, Miss No-name," Mika Bonteri pointedly remarked.

Rey did not miss the insulting tone he had when calling her Miss No-name. It infuriated her, and not for no reason. One of her worst memories was from the island on Ahch-To, when she found out she was nobody. She so desperately wanted her parents to be important, and it crushed her when she was forced to admit that wasn't so. It still did, even now when she found out that wasn't strictly true. The experience was too ingrained in her mind for her to simply forget it.

Being called a nobody still ate at her. It was at the point now, that she just wanted to openly brag that she _was_ a somebody. She was the rightful heir to the Empire. Whether or not people liked that was still in question, but whether or not she was a somebody was now completely unquestionable. And, the way she saw it, it was better to be a somebody than to be a nobody. Because nobodies were remembered by nobody.

She lifted two fingers, and flicked in Mika's direction, using the Force to roughly push his platform back to where it came from.

"I don't appreciate your attitude, Senator Bonteri," she said with a massive warning underlying her tone.

"You mean you don't appreciate anyone resisting you," he countered unfazed, steering his platform back towards the chamber center. That steadfast, unflinching demeanor did not intimidate Rey, but it did anger her even more that she couldn't simply force him into submission.

He seemed to notice that, and he raised his eyebrows pointedly, as if he was right. "I'm right, am I not?"

He hit it right on the nose, Rey knew. Her lack of a response proved it.

But she was not one to simply capitulate without a fight, as she retorted, "I don't see why you're so opposed. Either way, the fact of the matter is simple: these people need me to protect them. I intend to fulfill that duty as best I can."

"By stripping us of the very democratic process we have all been fighting to restore?" he posed. "I don't think so."

They both glared intensely at one another. Their focus was nowhere else. Mika's expressive bright blue eyes held a steely resolve in their expanses. He was determined to not let Rey trample all over what he believed in.

But when he finally got a sliver of a look beneath that black hood, he realized with a start it would be so much harder to actually live up to that. When he saw those vibrant golden eyes, he remembered what his mother had once told him regarding them.

"_If you see someone with those eyes, then they are not the same person they used to be._"

It was part of a greater lesson that he learned regarding the man who by all rights should've been his uncle: Anakin Skywalker. And with all he knew about Rey, he thought it was safe to say she was a similar case. Whatever he had heard of the Resistance hero, the _Jedi,_ Rey, this woman he was confronted with was clearly not that.

She was no Jedi.

Poe just looked back and forth between Rey and Mika like it was a ping pong match.

"Perhaps we could cast a vote?" he heard C-3PO's sometimes annoying voice interject.

Even though Poe generally tried to tune out the protocol droid – it was no secret that he found the golden droid annoying – this time he actually proposed a good idea.

"Perhaps we could cast a vote?" he asked to the entire chamber, taking the protocol droid's idea word-for-word.

Zorii stifled her giggle. He was just adorably hopeless outside his element.

"You know, that's a great idea," Mika remarked with a smirk of suddenly gained confidence. He was positive almost nobody would vote to give Rey that kind of power. "Let's let democracy do its work."

Rey's withering glare did nothing but make her immense displeasure known.

"Very well." The third person to be known as Senator Bonteri clapped his hands together, speaking to the entire chamber. "Let's get started. Everyone, cast your vote on whether Rey should be granted emergency powers."

Just before everyone could cast their votes, however, Rey crouched down and then slowly stood back up, raising her arms up and out to her sides, as she used the Force to lift and choke everyone in the chamber.

As everyone floundered in the air trying to breathe, Rey gleefully taunted, "I advise you think about your decision. Making the wrong one could have _permanent_ consequences."

She hadn't hesitated to choke absolutely _everyone_ in the chamber. Even Poe, Zorii, Finn, Rose, and those sympathetic to the Resistance were left dangling in the air helpless. For Mika, it was a calamity, as Rey's grip around his throat was just too strong for him to break out of. Even he, as well-trained with the Force as he was, was nothing compared to her. All his defenses were like paper compared to her sharp talons of darkness.

Thanks to her 'influence,' the vote quickly swung in her favor as most people just voted for her to assume emergency powers simply so they could get free from her death grip.

As soon as a majority vote came about, she released everyone.

"Thank you for your understanding," she said, sadistically smirking as everyone gasped for air. "In time, you will realize that this was the right decision."

Overwhelmed by Rey's incredible strength, Mika clambered his way using the railing to stand back up. Having been caught off-guard the way he was, it allowed Rey the opportunity to deliver a huge psychological blow to him.

"I'll protect all your families. All of your children can grow up in a safe environment."

She stared directly up at him with a poisonous smirk on her lips, knowing with that passive threat that she had already won against him.

Hearing the toxicity in her voice as she talked about children and families, Mika was frozen with panic. She must've gotten into his head as she was choking him and seen his family.

Her podium retreated down into the floor, yet all he could think about was getting back home. He could _not_ allow his family to be in danger. Not again. It would destroy him to lose any more of them.

He walked out of the chamber in a daze. There, Jacen and Hera thought it was obvious that Mika looked haunted. It was very rare for the man to appear terrified, so they knew something serious had happened.

"You okay?" the younger Syndulla asked, concerned.

"I need to go home," Mika replied with a very uncharacteristic small voice as he continued on.

Jacen wanted to go with him, as he could plainly see that Mika was not okay. But other parts of him wanted to stay. He was aware of the very recent instability of the Resistance and didn't hesitate when Mika asked for his help. One part of him wanted to stay and see things through.

But, at the same time, his mother had also answered that call. It didn't surprise him. She had always been one for seeing justice, and nothing would ever change that. But he couldn't ignore that she was nowhere near as strong as he was. He had the Force on his side, whereas she didn't. Hence, another part of him also wanted to stay just incase anything happened so he could keep her out of harm's way.

"Go."

He whirled around on his mother, surprised she had said that, but he saw that look in her eyes, the one where she had already made up her mind and nobody could change it.

"He's only ever been like this once before. Last year," she noted. Her gaze was gentle. "You know what happened back then."

He did. He could never forget. Mika had lost both his parents within days of each other. His mother had perished whilst he was mourning his father, and it just compounded the sense of loss he had felt.

"He really needs your support right now if that's what's happening," Hera persuaded.

He briefly looked towards Mika, then back to his mother. He knew it was what was right, but he found it hard to just leave his mother alone.

"Go. I'll be fine," the Twi'lek gave him that one motherly smile that just made him feel like everything _would_ be fine.

With that, Jacen was finally persuaded. He left her with one last embrace. He just hoped that everything would work out. As things stood right now, nothing was certain.

XXXXXXXXXX

Meanwhile back in the chamber, Poe, similarly out of breath as everyone else, looked across from where he lied on the floor and saw Zorii, identical in situation to him. Rey had choked everyone in the chamber, including her. That fact gave him a newfound perspective.

"Okay, kriff this garbage-picking princess," he spat out as he got to his feet. He was absolutely done with the ridiculousness of Rey. Her hurting Zorii was the last straw for him.

Though he didn't see it, Zorii looked at him with a strange feeling in her as he helped her up. It threw her off, especially after he had been so adamant that there was nothing wrong with Rey taking the reins.

But a small part of her told her he had turned against Rey because she had hurt her. Though she normally wasn't one to care about such chivalry, it still tickled her pink to see Poe try to be a hero for her sake, even if he hilariously failed at it.

"I accepted her taking charge when she asked for it. She convinced me, fair enough. But _now?_ No. Uh-uh. Something needs to change," Poe continued to rant as they both left the chamber.

"What needs to change?" Finn asked as he and Rose appeared.

Poe threw his hands up, frustrated. "I don't know, but _something_ needs to! Clearly we can't trust Rey anymore if she's all too willing to abuse her Force magic or whatever just to get her way!"

Finn remained silent, but subconsciously rubbed his throat at the reminder of what his best friend just did. It was bad enough that it even happened at all, but what was worse was that Rey's actions didn't surprise him that much. After how disconnected from the Resistance she was, it felt almost as if it was inevitable.

Ever since she had returned, there was this ominous, electric feeling in the air that made his hairs stand up.

XXXXXXXXXX

That meeting did not go the way Rey wanted.

In an ideal universe, everyone, including the Resistance, would've fully supported her and given her the tools needed to restore order. That's exactly what she was aiming for when she sent the _Derriphan_ to destroy Chandrila. She wanted the destruction of the planet to create a sense of unity among everyone to retaliate against the perpetrators, which she had also expertly orchestrated via ordering the Star Destroyer to come to Coruscant, effectively sealing them into a trap for the Resistance.

Unfortunately, that did not come to pass. That damn Senator Bonteri just had to stand up to her and sway everyone else away.

Why couldn't everyone see that the universe wasn't safe? Rey felt she knew better than anyone that a loved one could be taken away so quickly and so abruptly. It was the worst feeling she could imagine, hence why she wanted to stop such things from happening ever again.

She was never one to admit defeat. While her initial plan may have been a bust, she did have a backup plan in place. If she couldn't use the Resistance and its allies to fulfill her wishes, then she would just use the Final Order assets she had acquired instead.

She got out her communicator and immediately summoned Captain Sabrond's holographic form.

Chesille immediately stood to attention. "Milady!"

"Execute Plan S," Rey commanded.

Knowing exactly what that plan entailed, the Captain bowed her head in deference. "Yes, my Empress."

Satisfied, Rey ended the transmission.

Now that she was forced into taking this route, she realized that it was actually pretty nice to have a military force that would follow her commands without question. As experience had just proven, the Resistance would never be that loyal not just to her, but to anybody, including Leia. She recalled the story of how Poe tried to cause a mutiny just because he believed he was right and the admiral Leia trusted was wrong.

What an egotistic moron, she thought derisively. Though she didn't see the point in killing him, she wouldn't complain if he gave her a reason.

And from what she could feel, he was about to give her one. She could feel him and several others approaching her location, a large room she reckoned was once used as a ballroom or for other large gatherings.

The room layout told her two things: first was that there was a lot of space to move around which she found desirable incase talks devolved into battle; second, and a little less desirable, was that there were more ways in, and out, than she would've liked.

Whatever. She would deal with it as it came, she decided as the doors behind her burst open.

"What held you up? Did you have to wait on Dameron to do some touching up?" she taunted, still facing away.

It was brave of her, considering there was a platoon's worth of weapons aimed at her, one of them being the pilot's.

"Just shut up unless you want to be executed by firing squad," Poe spat. He was absolutely fuming at Rey's entire person. Even that little taunt was enough to set him off.

Rey slowly turned around, taking in with her eyes the amount of people who had joined him. There were the usual suspects, that being Finn, Poe, Rose, Zorii, Jannah, Kaydel, and Chewie. But there were several more who were so bold as to stand up to her. Some came from the former New Republic Senate, and some she recognized from various Resistance briefings she had attended before Exegol. The main two she recognized were Captain Doza – the captain of the _Colossus_ – and former Rebellion General Hera Syndulla. All of them barring Finn had their blasters leveled at her.

But none of them intimidated her in the least. "You think _they,_" she gestured to the numerous people who had entered with Poe, "scare me?"

She unleashed a haunting cackle. It was very demoralizing to the Resistance that they outnumbered her by dozens, and yet she didn't seem threatened at all.

Certainly it was to Finn. Even now, he still wasn't sure that it was the right move to confront Rey. To him, it was akin to adding an ember to a tinder box. In other words, a very dangerous game to play.

Rose herself was a bit on the fence, but still felt this was for the best. Everyone else, like Zorii, Kaydel, Jannah and many others, were determined to see Rey go down.

"I don't fear you, Poe," the dark-clad Empress proclaimed. "Why should I be afraid of someone whose nature it is to sow chaos and cripple his own allies? Or did Leia lie to me when she told me you were the reason her entire bomber fleet perished?"

Poe snarled and rushed forward, only seeing red. "Don't turn this around on me! We'd have no more problems in the galaxy if only you could put your broken heart away and do your job!"

He knew he made a mistake saying that as soon as he felt an invisible force grip him and yank him onto his knees right before Rey. The Resistance immediately retaliated by aiming their weapons and readying to fire.

"I ought to cut your tongue out for that kind of disrespect!" she hissed, her golden eyes glaring a hole into him.

"Whoa whoa, please!" Finn stepped forward, trying to deescalate things between both sides. "No need to cut out tongues, no need to blast into oblivion. Let's just talk peacefully. We can do that, right?"

Rey and Poe both looked at him, with their own variations of 'are you kidding me right now?' across their faces.

"I don't know," she returned. Then, she shoved Poe backwards with the Force, back to his comrades, where Zorii was quick to help him back up. "Can we?"

Her callousness made Finn pause. His instincts saw her phrasing as a threat, but his past experience and his optimism made him believe she could be reasoned with.

"Considering we're all friends, I believe so," he replied, with just enough confidence that it was believable.

Rey didn't share the same sentiment, giggling derisively at him. "Oh, you're so blinded by optimism."

"Yeah, well what's wrong with that?" he asked, noting how she just refused to stand still. She was like an animal, sniffing out her prey. "I remember you being the poster child when it came to looking at the bright side."

"That _child_ grew up," she snarled. The ferocity in her voice was so strong it nearly made him jump back. "She realized the hard way that not everything is sunshine and rainbows."

Finn wondered if she was talking about what he suspected she was.

"So something actually is bothering you?" he pressed, playing it safe with his suspicions for now.

His question had come so out of left-field that it took her aback. She was used to being more or less ignored by the Resistance until they decided they needed her, so to hear that they were paying enough attention to notice something was up with her was a bit disconcerting. Had they caught on to what she was orchestrating?

"What are you talking about?" she slowly asked, letting through a hint of confusion.

"_Something's_ clearly bothering you," he repeated. "Unless you're hiding something else, then the only thing I can think of it being is your name. Your _true_ name."

Her true name? That's what he thought it was?

Once she realized that he meant it, she cackled. The idea that _that's_ what he thought was wrong with her was so absurd she just _had_ to laugh.

"Is that what you think?" she posed. "Haha, you're an idiot!"

Finn was caught off-guard by her response. Her reaction to his accusation made his confidence falter. Was that really the problem?

"Wait, wait, wait," she sobered up as a question came to mind. "How do you even know that?"

He didn't really know how to respond to that. Not because he didn't know, but more because he was scared of how she would react.

Rey saw, and harumphed. "You are a coward, FN-2187."

"That's not my name!" he blurted out, unable to contain himself. He detested the alphanumeric designation he was conditioned to answer to.

She noticed she had really struck a nerve there, and decided to dig into it a little deeper. "Isn't it? I thought we were going by our true names now. Go ahead and refer to me by mine."

Rey was daring him to expose her. If she was so reckless now that she legitimately didn't care about being public enemy number one by virtue of her name, then she had to be insane.

Once again, he didn't oblige, and she shook her head in disappointment. "Once a coward, always a coward, I suppose. But no matter." She then directed her attention to the Resistance. "If for some reason you've been living under a rock and have no idea what he's talking about, then it's pretty simple. My name is Rey Palpatine, and I am the granddaughter of the deceased Emperor. He died at my hand. Under the code of succession outlined by the Sith, everything that was once his is now mine."

A number of Resistance operatives were itching to pull their triggers, but Poe put a fist up, signaling them to hold their fire.

"… I'm sorry, what?" he asked, dumbfounded.

Rey gave him a withering stare. "You heard me the first time."

While true, Poe still found it impossible to understand. If this was what she had been hiding this whole time, then why was she upfront with it now?

"So what, you're an empress now?" Kaydel inferred, attempting to learn more.

Rey glanced at her for a moment. Though she was technically correct, she didn't dignify her with a response. Ignoring her was a clear sign of how little respect she held for her.

She turned to Finn instead. "You knew who I was yet you didn't think to tell me." A detached yet spiteful expression graced her face. "And you have the audacity to call yourself my friend."

That hurt Finn especially hard. He had believed he had forged a close connection with her over the year they've known one another, but to have Rey just spit on their friendship like it was dirt?

It kriffing hurt.

"Rey," he said gently. "There was a lot going on at the time. If I _had_ told you, do you really think you would've taken it well?"

"Do you really think I care?" she bluntly returned. "That's not why I hate you. I know who I am, and I don't give a bantha's arse about it. What I _do_ hate you for," her features shined with unbridled rage, "is for celebrating the death of the man I love."

Finn was stumped, a sensation that was unfortunately starting to become the norm when confronted with Rey.

But slowly, he realized that he was wrong about her. He _didn't_ know her as much as he thought he did. Something did niggle in his brain about Rey losing someone very close to her, someone she apparently considered dear enough to upend the entire galaxy for.

"That goes for the rest of you, as well," she snarled at the Resistance, who together seemed just as lost as Finn. "How could I possibly be friendly with people who utterly detest the one person who gave up his life just so I could live on?!"

She was so passionate as she vented her frustrations. Though he didn't know who this mystery guy was, Finn could tell he was extremely important to her, and that she took his unintentional disrespect super personally.

"Rey…" he approached her.

In response, she turned her back on him.

He sighed, knowing he deserved her scorn but still insistent that she at least listen. "Rey, please. I know I've hurt you. I just want to say I'm sorry."

He waited for her reply, not expecting a positive response but still hopeful nonetheless. If there was one thing that was unshakable in him, it was his loyalty to his friends. He still considered Rey one of those friends.

Rose still couldn't believe how many chances Finn was giving Rey. She was not so forgiving. But even though she still thought this was a bad idea, she couldn't help but admire Finn's incredible loyalty.

All of a sudden however, the building rumbled. It made the Resistance jump in panic. They began checking all their angles, trying to find the cause.

Rey, however, remained calm. She knew what it was causing the rumbling.

Her army had arrived.

Next, the lights went out, momentarily pitching the room into darkness before the emergency lights came on, painting the entire room an eerie shade of red. As the room was revealed again, Jannah had noticed all the doors were in the process of being shut, each one slamming shut as if it was final. Each thud gave an unpleasant tingle through her nervous system.

The hand Rey had used to subtly close all the doors with the Force now reached for her lightsaber. She opened it to its staff position, the audible click of it locking into place echoing throughout the silent room.

"Sorry won't bring him back," she murmured darkly, loud enough for Finn to hear.

Then, in one smooth, rapid motion – too quick for Finn to react – she ignited her crackling red blades, turned around, and slashed Finn across the face.

**XXXXXXXXXX**

_**I know. I'm evil for coming back after many months and ending the chapter like that. But, to be fair, I had always planned on ending it this way, so yeah.**_

_**I think I may have said this before but I'm having so much fun writing Rey this way. It's so much fun, but it also feels like a natural progression of who I think she would become after everything that happened in IX. So it's a win-win. It feels natural to me because Ben has always been her balance. Without him there, there's nothing to keep her in check. In particular, I like the idea of her darkness being rooted in Ben's 'death,' and the trauma she would carry because of that. It's all a part of my objective in making her as layered and complex as Ben is. She can seem irrational, but in her mind she can justify anything. It's a bit like the saying, 'every villain thinks they're a hero.'**_

_**But I have to talk about The Mandalorian. Specifically Ahsoka Tano. Dave Filoni is a GENIUS. Before I saw the episode I was worried she would become too big a player and tear away from the focus of the show being fundamentally about the Mandalorians. But after watching, I'm seriously impressed with how she was handled. She was given prominence in the episode, but not enough that she detracted from the overall Mandalorian theme. Basically, she functioned like a guest star, which allowed her to retain her degree of mystery and kind of mimicked how she was featured in Rebels. I personally like that for the selfish reason that it allows my backstory for her to remain canon-compliant, but also because it makes sure she doesn't become oversaturated and lose her luster. She's still super special.**_

_**If you did enjoy, then be sure to favorite and follow and leave a review. I love a good discussion so don't feel like you can't start one.**_


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